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The Inverted Torch 

AND OTHER POEMS 



The Inverted Torch 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

SAMUEL JOHN ALEXANDER 



SAN FRANCISCO 

A. M. ROBERTSON 

1912 






Copyright 1912 
By SAMUEL JOHN ALEXANDER 



THE ARGONAUT PRESS 



§GIA316026 



v> 



The publishers of the Century, Sunset, Out West, and the 
Smart Set have kindly permitted the author to include in this 
volume several of his poems that had appeared in these 
magazines, and their courtesy is here gratefully acknowledged. 



in 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

DEDICATION 9 

THE INVERTED TORCH 11 

OUR LADY OF SORROWS (To San Francisco) 13 

OUR LADY OF VICTORIES (To Loyal San Fran- 
ciscans wherever they may dwell) 17 

THE HALLS OF FANCY 20 

THE WEAVER 22 

THE PAGAN'S PLEA 24 

THE DENIED CHRIST 25 

CLOTH OF GOLD 27 

VIRGINIA'S GIFT 28 

THE OLD SOUTH TO THE MEMORY OF LINCOLN 29 

THE ANGRY RED STAR (To Ambrose Bierce) 31 

THE CRY OF THE HUMAN 33 

"THESE CHRISTS THAT DIE UPON THE BARRI- 
CADES"— 1871 36 

MARIE ANTOINETTE 43 

THE SONG OF RUPERT'S MEN 45 

TO THE MEMORY OF ALFRED TENNYSON (This 
Dedication of the "Divine Message" — An Un- 
finished Poem) 47 

GOD SAVE THE KING (To Mother England) 62 

THE KING'S TRYST 64 

THE MOTHER CALL 66 

SONNET (To Cromwell) 68 

ELIZABETH, THE QUEEN 69 

V 



PAGE 

THE GOLDEN ROSE (To' H. R. H. the Princess Henry 

of Battenberg) , IZ 

TO RUDYARD KIPLING le 

A DREAM OF ITALY 78 

HENRY V OF FRANCE 80 

THE GHOST OF ITYS 82 

A HEALTH TO THE KING (Of Portugal) 83 

FRANCIS I AT PAVIA 85 

AT THE TOURNAMENT 87 

AVE ATQUE VALE 88 

SONNET 89 

THE RED ROSE OF EARTH 90 

OUR LADY OF THE GATE (To San Francisco) 91 

THE GOD ON HORSEBACK 92 

SONNET 93 

FEET OF CLAY 94 

TO ONE WHO KNOWS 96 

TO SAN FRANCISCO 97 

CHI-CA-GO! CHI-CA-GO! (At San Francisco, April 18, 

1906) 99 

OUR LADY OF THE DOME 101 

THE ROSE OF PEACE (To a Child dead at the foot 

of Seventh Street, San Francisco) 103 

THE TRYST OF FATE 105 

TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 107 

THE DIVORCE lo9 

TO AMBROSE BIERCE Ill 

"AH, GIVE US BUT YESTERDAY!" 112 

A LETTER TO A GHOST 113 

THE TOUCH OF THE HUMAN (April, 1906) 117 

THE SILENT HOUSE 121 

THE BROTHERS 123 

TO JOAQUIN MILLER 125 

vi 



PAGE 

THE WAR SHIPS OF THE SKIES -. . 126 

GLOWING EMBERS 127 

THE LEPER 130 

MY LITTLE GHOST 131 

GOD'S HILL AT BELMONT 133 

SONNET 134 

THE HILLS OF OCEAN VIEW 135 

DEAD JOY 138 

TO SING LEE (At Millbrae, April 18, 1906) 139 

THE CALIFORNIA POPPY 141 

IN NOVEMBER 142 

THE KING IN DARIEN 143 

TO THE NEMOPHILA ("Baby Blue Eyes") 145 

THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS 146 

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER 147 

ELECTRA 148 

THE BRIDAL 149 

THE CHOICE 151 

SONNET (To the Dear People) 152 

"MYSELF AM HELL" 153 

WHOLESALE ONLY 155 

SONNET (To Life) 157 

TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN KEATS 158 

OUR LADY OF WELCOME 159 

SONNET (Prescribed for Poets and Inscribed to Editors) 160 

THE THEFT OF WINTER (In California) 161 

THE PHILISTINE . 163 

SONNET ("Dead, Dead, Dead") 164 

THE WHITE ROSE AT BERESFORD (To E. W.) . . . . 165 

TO LINCOLN (The Old South and the New) 167 

THE SEEKERS (San Francisco, April 18) 169 

HER BIRTHDAY. APRIL 18 (To San Francisco) 172 

SONNET (To the Columbine) 173 

vii 



PAGE 

THE IMPREGNABLE CASTLE 174 

THE THREE AT STANFORD 175 

TO MRS. N. C. P 176 

"THE REGIONS WHICH ARE HOLY LAND" (W. 

T. P.) 177 

THE HOUSE OF SPLENDID VISIONS 201 

THE WILL OF GOD (Inscribed, Without Permission, 
to the "Presidents" of the Central American "Re- 
publics") 203 

THE SHADOW BEFORE— AT NEW YEAR'S 205 

TO THE WOMAN (Writer of the Battle Hymn) 208 

GOD AND THE POET 209 

THE PASSING OF JOY 211 

GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT 213 

THE GOLDEN CUPS OF GOD (Inscribed, Without Per-. 

mission, to Theodore Roosevelt) 215 

THE CALL TO ARMS 219 

"THE GIFT TO DIE" (To My Lady Fortune) 221 

THE GOLDEN SPURS OF GOD 225 

THE GIFT OF THE SOUTH TO LINCOLN 233 

MISERERE DOMINE (October 10, 1911) 235 

THE PRAYER OF THE WEST (Judge Thou Between 

Them) . -. 237 

THE CRY OF THE EAST (Judge Thou Between Them) 240 

THE POET'S PROTOTYPE 243 

THE MUSE TO A MERCENARY POET 244 



Vlll 



DEDICATION 

Welcome, my masters ! Ye be come to buy 
At market prices, and with due regard 
To your own interest, lest ye should award 

For such commodity a price too high, 

A Soul. Then, marry, such to sell have I. 
Yet, as 'tis somewhat time and passion marred, 
God wot, ye shall not find my dealing hard ; 

For sell I must, so will it please ye try? 

Here be strange wares, intangible and frail; 

Some tarnished tinsel from some Cloth of Gold; 
A bursted bubble from a fairy tale; 

Some bitter memories of a birthright sold; 
A talent buried deep beyond avail; 

An ancient promise, unfulfilled from old. 



THE INVERTED TORCH 

I have paused at Thy Shrine in the porch 
Where the acolytes kneel and adore, 
But I went from their midst, who am more 

To the Innermost Holies that scorch 

With the flame of Thy Torch. 

Yea, My Lord, I have held them apart 
From the red dripping fingers of Life 
I have held them above in the strife, 

And I vow Thee my soul and my heart 

In the shrine where Thou art. 

I have lifted my soul to the vow. 

And my heart rises up nothing loath 
Though Thou claimest the vow and the oath, 

By the splendour of God on my brow 

Though Thou claimest them now. 

Shall I fear Thee, My Lord? Shall I fear? 
When the torrent of life is repressed, 
By Thy hand on my brow and my breast, 

Thou, visibly, audibly near 

To the eye and the ear. 

I have served where the light was withdrawn, 
I have sowed for a harvest of wrath, 
And the whirlwind hath reaped in my path 



11 



But Thy Torch was a splendour thereon 
And the Promise of Dawn. 

Though the Sun God belated shall twine 
In the rue for my forehead, a leaf 
Of His laurel, to mock at my grief 

I will turn to the Torch in Thy shrine 

And its splendour divine. 



12 



OUR LADY OF SORROWS 

TO SAN FRANCISCO. 

She stood in Her tattered purple, and called to them each 

by name; 
And Her words swept out on the winds and girdled the 

earth with a flame. 
Oh, the North and the South were quickened; the East 

and the West were stirred; 
And the blood flushed up in their cheeks; their souls 

flashed up to Her word. 
And they came from lands far sundered, that a world 

away divides, 
And the deserts rose against them and the Gods of the 

winds and tides; 
But they swept above and beyond them and came to the 

Golden Gate 
Of the House of a Thousand Pillars, where Our Lady of 

Sorrows sate; 
And of old from its halls of banquet a myriad shining 

lights 
Streamed through the purple shadows, from a score of 

star-crowned heights. 
But the walls were fallen asunder, and the pillars lay 

overthrown ; 
And thrice a Queen for Her sorrows. She sate on a fallen 

stone ; 
For Her court was held in the open; Her throne was set 

on the Way 



13 



That stretches its breadth of splendour from Twin Peaks 

down to the bay;' 
And Her robes were soiled and tattered, their purple 

dimmed with the smoke, 
But they knelt in the ashes around Her, and kissed the 

hem as She spoke. 
And She said: "I am She who was set at the marches of 

sea and of land. 
With the crowns of the world on my brow, and girt with 

the sword of command; 
And the many come to my doorways; they enter, abide 

and pass 
Like shadows on wind-driven waters, or seeds from the 

wind-shaken grass. 
Though the Gods play at quoits with my hills, though 

Titans creep up to the lure, 
Yet I watch unafraid from my heights in the centre of 

things that endure. 
Ye are lords in your far lying lands and great in your 

lordships, yet still, 
Ye are tools of the Gods to my hands to hew to the lines 

of My Will; 
From nethermost deeps I have called; ye have followed 

the path of the sun; 
Ye are four where your rule is supreme; but to serve and 

obey me but one. 
Yet with rending and riving of earth the old order passes 

away; 
Ye were liegemen on yesterday's heights, but brothers in 

deeps of today. 



14 



And as sister to brother I charge ye, go forth from me 

now to your lands, 
That ye dazzle the eyes of the Gods with the gifts of your 

brotherly hands; 
That the sails, like a white-crested torrent, stream out on 

the limitless blue, 
With the gifts that shall top and exceed and better the 

best that I knew ; 
That my house, reestablished, shall rise four square to the 

corners of earth, 
With Honour to circle the walls, and with Beauty to shine 

at the hearth; 
That the pillars befluted and carved like a forest of marble 

arise, 
And the domes like a rainbow of bubbles float over them 

into the skies. 
As the flick of a whip on the cheek, that brings the red 

flush through the tan, 
I adjure ye to this by the all that may quicken the pulse 

of the Man ; 
By the bond of the human between us; by Honour, the 

rock that abides 
In the turbulent ocean of life, midst the shifting of sands 

and of tides ; 
By the Day when our souls shall be weighed in the bal- 
ance, unclothed and unshod. 
By the Spirit Divine in the man, and the Absolute Splen- 
dour of God." 
She spoke and they heard Her in silence ; but sudden their 

faces went white. 



15 



They were dumb from a stress of emotion, and pale from 

excesses of light. 
And they spoke no word to Her speaking, but bowed with 

their heads in the dust, 
With a promise, a prayer and a vow to compass the heights 

of Her trust. 
So they went from Her presence and parted, and hastened 

each one to his land, 
That their tribute, thrice trebled, might thunder a torrent 

of gold to Her hand. 



16 



OUR LADY OF VICTORIES 

TO LOYAL SAN FRANCISCANS WHEREVER THEY MAY DWELL. 

Flung from off our Mother's Bosom, we have wandered 

from Her side, 
The hills rise up between us and long level leagues divide. 
But wherever we may roam 
Yet our hearts are still at Home, 
And She holds them in Her Keeping, where the gaunt and 

shattered Dome 
Wraps the ocean mists about it, in its hurt and angry 
pride. 

We have built our household altars on the Padres' Royal 

Way 
That dallies with the shining hills, that loiters with the bay, 
Where the spendthrift Morning spills 
Floods of light upon the hills 
From his brimming golden flagons, that the patient Night 

refills. 
On the Alameda hills that guard the gateways of the 
Day. 

God, with loving purpose lingered o'er the primal solitude. 
Smiled content upon His handiwork and "Saw that it was 
good." 

And the radiance of His Smile 
Lingers o'er each shining mile 
Of the green and lustrous valley, and the redwoods clois- 
tered aisle, 

17 



Over marshland and o'er meadow, over mountain and 
o'er wood. 

But Her children claim their Birthright; they have written 

large their claim 
In the Sybil's book of Destiny, escaping from the flame. 
By our claim of Birth and Blood, 
By Her claim of Motherhood, 
We shall claim our Right inherent, long withheld and 

long withstood, 
To the deep sky-filling thunder of Her great, historic 
Name. 

A whisper on the Belmont hills; the Redwood plains were 

stirred ; 
The Woodside mountains bent their crests of lofty pride, 

and heard; 

And a sudden splendour broke 
O'er the San Mateo oak. 
And it tossed its arms on high to grasp a rainbow, as She 

spoke, 
With the Promise of Her Coming, long desired and long 

deferred. 

By the shadow of Her Midnight, writ aforetime on Her 

brow, 
By the radiance of Her Morning, shining full upon Her 
now, 

By red dripping Spear and Rod, 
By the Pathway that He trod 

18 



When the hills were rent asunder by the dying cry of 

God, 
She hath pledged Her Soul on high in recognition of Her 

vow. 

By all things that man holds holy, She shall surely come 

to them, 
In Her robes of Royal purple, with Her Regal diadem, 
And the haughty light that lies 
In the depths of those dark eyes 
Shall grow mellow as the moonlight in the dusk of tropic 

skies, 
As Her children kneel about Her, clutching at Her gar- 
ment's hem. 

Majestically moving from the reestablished throne, 

Her feet efface the painted lie upon the boundary stone ; 
For Her Faith and Love abide 
To Her Own, that scattered wide. 

See Her myriad watch fires flicker from the quiet country 
side. 

She comes across the alien fields to claim again her 

OWN. 



19 



THE HALLS OF FANCY 

These are the lofty and far-reaching halls 

Whose light and airy walls 

Are built of stuff of dreams; 

With ever-changing, iridescent gleams 

Of sunlight and star shining and moonbeams; 

And lit from that far height 

That lies beyond the tides of day and night. 

These are the charmed pinnacles that rise, 

Piercing enchanted skies; 

Up from the glamour thrown 

By seven-hued rainbows of the corner stone; 

Up through the purple silences, star sown. 

To the far Central Throne 

Of Him, Who Reigns All Knowing and Unknown. 

Put off thy shoes from thee and veil thy face ; 

This is His Holies Place. 

Let but the Levite stand 

With reverent face, and touch with hallowed hand 

The Ark that bears the Covenant of the land ; 

That seals our right to rise 

Above the brute, with seraphs of the skies. 

Oh, thou, my soul, awake to a new birth. 

Put off thy robes of earth. 

Stand naked and unshod 

Within these Holy Halls, where late hath trod 



20 



The Visible Presence of the Soul of God. 

Cleanse thou thyself, that pure, 

Thou mayst contain the Infinite, yet endure. 

Build thyself shining ladders of Heartbreak, 

My Soul, whereby to take 

Yon heaven-distant star. 

That beckons thee with smiling face from far, 

To the High Halls where the Immortals are. 

Let yon remotest sun 

Weave thee a path to the Ineffable One. 



21 



THE WEAVER 

The Weaver, weaving in a silent room 

The iridescent web of Fancy's loom, 

That opaline and changing Cloth of Gold, 

For his soul's ransom, with his soul's sweat told; 

With reverent awe, with foaming of the lips 

He drew his dream forms from the black eclipse 

Of primal voids. He saw his work unroll. 

Compelled and guided by the Oversoul. 

He fed the loom thread after shining thread. 

His flying hand a Hand diviner led. 

Exulting colors, ecstasies of light 

Reft from some God on his forbidden height; 

All lights, all shadows and all melodies; 

All discords trumpeted by winds and seas. 

All evanescent odors that are met 

Within the faded chaplet of Regret; 

A devil's prayer, that blistered where it fell 

And hell smut drifted on the smoke of hell ; 

A drop of sunlight from a dewy lawn. 

Spilled from the golden flagon of the dawn; 

A saint's desire, more white than shining wool; 

The Scarlet Soul of the Sin Beautiful; 

Flotsam and jetsam drifted to his hand. 

Wreckage of all men's souls, from no man's land. 

And good or ill, his fingers wove it in. 

The God compelled; it ever must have been. 

He leaned his soul to listen; not to miss 

God's whisper, speaking in the serpent's hiss; 



22 



He heard His trumpet from a far off height 

When the red lightning stabbed the heart of night; 

His soul's ear heard; he trembled and rejoiced 

In varying tones of God, the Many Voiced. 

A deeper silence on the silence falls; 

A deeper shadow on the shadowed walls; 

God and the Weaver and a silent loom, 

And shadows dripping blackness on the gloom 

Above his finished work; and over all 

God's Shadow thrown above him as a pall, 

Starlit, sun flaming, with its glooms unfurled 

Between him and the shadow of the world. 

And his work blossoms purple, gold and red, 

And the white face above it of the dead. 

The Weaver's web is woven; let him keep 

Between the eve and dawn his tryst with sleep. 



23 



THE PAGAN'S PLEA 

Thou Knowest ! Oh, Thou Knowest ! Thou ! 
Jehovah, Buddha, Jove, or Lord, 
To Whom all men with one accord, 

At diverse altars pay their vow, 

Thou Knowest! Oh, Thou sad-browed Christ, 
Or be Thou God, or be Thou Man, 
How I with bleeding feet outran 

Thy Faith, which not my soul sufficed. 

My soul, attuned to Arcadie, 

Drank discord in the city street; 

I dreamed of Latmos — and my feet 
Were bloody upon Calvary. 

I, also bruised with bloody rods, 
Turned unto These, Incarnate Joy. 
Gods with the light heart of a boy, 

And Beauty in the guise of Gods. 



24 



THE DENIED CHRIST 

Oh, Face Divinely Human, grave and tender. 

Deep-lined whereon I trace 
Sad thoughts, that mar the else ineffable splendour 

We might not dare to face; 

Why comest Thou at night, when dews of healing 

Should visit my sad eyes, 
Thy robes ungirt, half hiding, half revealing 

The wounds of sacrifice. 

Lord, Lord, I see the beauty of Thy Being, 

And of Thy Words that shine 
Star-like across dim ages; but the seeing 

May never make me Thine. 

The solemn, sacred service of Thy Preaching 

Lies patent to mine eyes. 
Yet what my soul might gather of Thy Teaching 

My Pagan heart denies. 

I, also, from a Calvary exceeding, 

I, scourged with bloody rods. 
Turn from Thy Passion and Thy Brother Pleading 

To my remembered Gods. 

For I am Greek of Star-Crowned Hellas, lying 
An emerald, sun kissed 



25 



Beneath her skies of sapphire, vainly vying 
With seas of amethyst. 

Still must I hear in western woodlands ringing 

The Syrinx pipes of Pan; 
Striking old chords of recollection, bringing 

My vales Arcadian. 

Still must some Pagan Almond Flower of Beauty 

To which my heart shall cling 
Bloom from the barren Aaron's rod of duty 

In perfect blossoming. 



26 



CLOTH OF GOLD. 

God, the Giver, wove the gracious Cloth of old. 
Maculate, perchance, and sullied, but His Royal Cloth of 
Gold. 

And He wove it to the flashing 

Of His lightnings, and the crashing 
Of His thunders, splitting open the impenetrable gloom. 

His Divine Foreordination 

Lit the path of tribe and nation 
Flashing from His flying shuttles and the thunder of His 
loom. 

God hath willed it from the primal dawn, and still 
All the ages sweat their blood and tears in furtherance 
of His Will. 

He hath Willed that heights supernal 

Rise above the plains; eternal. 
Lest the Star of Splendour pale its fires, and Glory pass 
away; 

That the soul of man might quicken ; 

Lest the soul of man should sicken 
In the stagnant lower levels and a monotone of gray. 

God hath given ! Woe to him whose hands profane 

The Inviolable Cloth of Gold Where His Anointed reign. 
For His Cloth of Gold before them, 
Flung about them, rising o'er them, 

Is the canopy of Princes and a carpet to His Feet. 
Where He comes with light unfailing. 
Comes with comfort and availing. 

Where the King of Kings above them and His earthly 
Regents meet. 



VIRGINIA'S GIFT • 

Two! Two of her sons and yet one had sufficed; 

O'er topping the height of the nation's behest; 
Two first born and noblest. Bear witness, oh, Christ, 

Of the sons that she suckled in pride at her breast 
She gives us the best. 

Lo, these are her jewels; the Virgin of Wars 
Hath set them above in the heavens for a sign, 

For a Promise and Portent of Peace midst the stars, 
Of hatred and discord grown dimmer, that shine 
From south of the Line. 

Let the virgins go forth with the lamps in their hand; 

With the gifts of the times let the wise men adore. 
As a God in her giving, she proffers the land 

The Star Shining Most of the opulent More 
Of sons that she bore. 



28 



THE OLD SOUTH TO THE MEMORY OF LINCOLN 

Full reverently, and with contrite heart, 

Of that great Whole, we come to claim a part. 

The land's Great Tribune, faithful to his trust. 

All Merciful, All Patient, and All Just. 

Time, the great alchemist, hath thrown within 

His crucible, some portion of our sin. 

His solvent, the all comprehending touch 

Of Human in This Man, availeth much 

To melt the baser metals, hate and scorn, 

Corroding envy and a pride outworn; 

Touched with a Christ-like tenderness, behold, 

He gives them back to us refined gold. 

Which gold of Love, perchance, may serve to pay 

Our tithes, too long withheld from him, today. 

Content yourself, not lightly do we change; 

And changed to him, yet we do not estrange 

Ourselves from that we are, and shall remain, 

Though all the future plead to us in vain. 

The high and haughty humor of the blood 

We drew from Mother England, stands us good. 

In rock-ribbed stubbornness, we hold our place 

Within the old traditions of our race. 

Our fathers served the King across the sea; 

We, for the same Lost Cause, drew swords with Lee. 

We stand, and still shall stand as we have stood, 

The heirs and guardians of the Ancient Blood. 

The purple shadows of our past are thrown 

About his light, and still the light is shown. 



29 



The clearer for the shadows, we must yield 
To him, the last fruits of an outworn field. 
The half-unwilling homage, wrenched apart 
And crowned, above the passions of our heart. 
We may not follow in his steps of light ; 
But we may watch and worship in the night. 
I think that the All Human in This Man, 
Lest that the All Divine should mar His plan 
With a too high perfection, over bright. 
Too fiercely blinding for our mortal sight. 
Still draws him to us, nearer and more near. 
More perfect, were too perfect, and less dear. 
We love him for himself, and for the flaw 
That sets his steps with ours in Nature's law. 
Flawed with the old familiar flaw from birth. 
The fond, sweet Birthmark of our Mother Earth. 
South of the South, within our veins there runs 
Mixed with our blood, the blood of Southern suns. 
We give not lightly; giving, give our whole, 
The undivided all of heart and soul. 
Now, in his full-leafed coronet of praise 
We come to lay, among the palms and bays. 
Our Southern Olive, the most dearest trust. 
That time may lay above his sacred dust. 
Late won, our Love goes with it, and if late, 
He, who hath won Eternity, may wait. 



30 



THE ANGRY RED STAR 

TO AMBROSE BIERCE. 

Up from the West I saw it rise; 

I watched and worshipped from afar; 

Not Peace on earth proclaimed the Star, 
The Angry Red Star of the skies. 

In darkened skies it set its rule. 

They fled before the fiery sign; 

It pierced with influence malign 
The triple armor of the fool. 

War, war, a just and righteous war! 
Its flaming lances in and out 
Flashed their ensanguined lights about 

The altars where the false priests are; 

Whose shrines the ancient shrines supplant; 
Who kneeling, bind about their face 
Phylacteries of the Commonplace, 

Wherewith to seek the Great God Cant. 



That cold, inclement breast of Art 
I touched, and found it but the sheath 
, To hide in deeper depths beneath 
Thy warmly red and human heart; 



31 



Which bade a doubting heart maintain 

Its birthright of celestial fire; 

And bade an ancient height aspire 
Above the levels of the plain. 

Through all my paths of unsuccess, 
In the black dungeons of my night, 
Thy Words v^ere still the dawning light 

Escaping from the dark's duress ; 

That shining on my height unwon 
A beacon fire of Promise burned, 
To which I held, to which I turned, 

As Parsees to the risen sun. 

Oh, if my soul may hope to rise 

In some new light of some new dawn, 
Round after broken round upon 

My Jacob's ladder to the skies, 

I, though upon its topmost round, 

Will pause and give my thanks at length 
To thy strong soul which gave me strength, 

And set my feet above the ground. 

I thank the Gods, who gave me grace 
To link my lesser name with thine; 
With thy reflected light to shine. 

Although but for a moment's space. 



32 



THE CRY OF THE HUMAN 

We were near to each other a moment, and nearer we 

were that I saw 
The touch of the Human upon you, and loved you for 

stain and for flaw. 
We were dear to each other a moment, but now you have 

grown from me far, 
And bright as the lance of the Sun God, and clean as the 

light of a star. 
The sound of your name has grown holy ; I falter it under 

my breath. 
Can you hearken that cry of the Human, flung back 

through the gateways of death? 
Though I add to my stature a cubit, though I clasp to the 

breast for my own 
The belt of yon hunter in heaven, could I reach you to 

where you have grown? 
Though out of the depths I approach you, and draw^ down 

your soul to my touch. 
Can I bid it be you as I knew you, and hold it and love it 

as such? 
Shall I seek you, who held you the dearest, where the 

lilies blow cold and white 
On margins of motionless waters, in the perfect and pas- 
sionless light. 
Where the hymns rise up heavy like incense, and the harps 

and the viols are strung? 
I want you again as I knew you, with the earth stain on 

heart and on tongue. 

33 



I want you again as I saw you, when booted and spurred 

and astride, 
You sat with your knee on the pommel, a-flush from the 

heat of the ride. 

You rode through the gates of the morning, and a breeze 

of the dawn, as you came, 
Breathed on life's smoldering embers, and stirred the wan 

ashes to flame. 
You came as the breaking of daylight, through the 

branches of blossoming trees. 
And the desert of life became vocal with the voices of 

birds and of bees. 
And the hands of the spring, in their weaving, had woven 

you garments of joy, 
And your wine of the summer ran over from the jeweled 

gold cup of the boy. 
Oh, stranger, in Strangerland yonder, new god, with the 

old feet of clay, 
Were dearer the roses that faded, and the loves that went 

out with the day? 
Do you weary of harp and of viol and the droning of pas- 
sionless tunes. 
And the heavy, barbaric splendour, through the heavy, 

unchanging noons? 
'Tis noon in the courtyards of Heaven, unbegot of the 

kiss of the sun, 
And the souls pass up without shadow, for the noon and 

the night are as one. 
There is light in the ultimate heavens, fathomless, blinding 

and white. 

34 



Oh, boy that I loved in the foretime, engulfed in abysses 

of light, 
Do you shrink from the pitiless splendour, and clutch at 

the jewel lit bars, 
And sigh your soul into the distance to the best beloved 

star of the stars? 



35 



"THESE CHRISTS THAT DIE UPON THE 
BARRICADES"— 1871 

In the days when the brimming cup of guilt 

That France replenished, ran o'er and spilt 

Turbulent torrents of bloody waves, 

Bearing her sons to nameless graves. 

And the insolent ghost of Ninety-Three 

Walked in the open for all to see, 

In the faithless city strange things were done. 

That man might flee from and devils shun. 

And Paris arose, half God, half beast, 

And the beast sprang up, the God decreased; 

And she went forth in the night and stood 

With the jungle taint hot in her blood; 

With the frantic eyes of one who knew 

Ninety-Three and Bartholomew; 

With soul of a devil, flawed and scarred, 

Diamond bright and diamond hard; 

And the Leash of God but scarce repressed 

The tiger's heart in her human breast. 

And the devil beat his loud rappel 

For recruits from San Antoine — and hell. 

And the grim old saint threw off his gray. 

And stood like a galliard gallant, gay 

In insolent colour, vibrantly red. 

Like a Gabriel's trumpet over the dead.^ 

And the soul of the devil flashed hell warm 

And hell red over the hell black storm, . 

And answered the hell shriek of the cry, 



36 



"On to the Barricades ! Kill and Die !" 
Oh, Christ of Cavalry ! Ghost of God ! 
Red with the wound of nail and rod, 
Was it for This Thy Sweat and Tears 
Swept like a river adown the years. 
Gulfed and lost in the black abyss 
And crimson flood of a day like this. 
Yet if demons, devil released from hell, 
They fought like Gods; like Gods they fell; 
And the Splendid Madness of their cause 
Flashed up star high above human laws; 
Guilt with a crown of light, star sown, 
Murder Majestic upon a throne. 
Pushed from their foothold inch by inch, 
They fell in their tracks, but did not flinch ; 
Did not flinch when the cannon came 
Vomiting death from throats aflame; 
They died like heroes, and knew not why; 
And who shall question man's right to die? 
And ever above, their flags flashed red, 
A hell flame menace o'er quick and dead. 
And the men who threw the dice with God 
Stood in the last red ditch, red shod, 
With red hands raised for the final throw 
Of loaded dice that must turn up low. 
Their soul's strength propped the broken wall 
Of the Barricade, crumbling to its fall ; 
They stood like a rock, and felt it reel, 
Swept by a tidal wave of steel ; 
Stood in a phalanx, strong but thin 



37 



When the wall broke down, the storm rushed in; 

Breasts full front to the flood that came 

A spray of steel on a wave of flame, 

They sank submerged, but did not yield 

To the torrent sweeping across the field. 

And then, as a ray of light divides 

The sullen torment of tortured tides. 

Came from their midst a boy, who stood 

In that horror haunted welter of blood 

As breath and dew of the Dawn that fell 

Like balm on that gaping wound of hell. 

Hand to his brow he stood at salute. 

All blood bespattered, a fair young shoot 

Of the Tree of Treason, from bitter root. 

A gypsy blossoming wildly sweet. 

Grown in the garden O'f slum and street. 

And a dozen years on his brow grew scant. 

And a trebled measure of woe and want. 

And he claimed, with the light heart of his race, 

From the hands of Death a moment's grace; 

A reef of Time, wherefrom to see 

The ocean of All Eternity ; 

Leave to go to his home near by, 

To go with Life, to return to die. 

And the leader smiled from eyes heart-warm 

At the boyish face and slender form; 

He was well content that the boy should draw 

The one white lot from the outraged law; 

And with tender gruffness he bade him on, 

*'Go to the devil and keep thee gone." 



38 



And the boy's eyes flashed and his cheek flushed red 

In his wounded pride, as he turned and said : 

"Pardon, my captain, you jest; but I 

Will surely return in time to die." 

And grimly and gladly the captain drew 

The lots of Fate for the captured few; 

And Death laughed loud as he held the sack 

The lots were drawn from, for all were black. 

For these were the lots of Fate for all, 

To stand together against a wall, 

To stand for a time — for all time to fall ; 

Riddled with shot, and thrown to drench 

With the blood of traitors, a shallow trench. 

Brutal, blood-stained, braggart, but Brave ! 

They carried their valour unto the grave. 

And flung a jest with their dying breath 

To ruffle the majesty of Death. 

And suddenly rose above the noise 

In silver treble, a boyish voice, 

Thin and clear and distinct and sweet 

Over the riot upon the street; 

The cry of Honour from heights of Pride, 

The cry of Humanity, Deified. 

"A moment, my captain, 'tis only I, 

Back again just in time to die." 

And the tumult ceased, and the silence fell 

Of God's Truce over that seething hell; 

And captor and captive, with dim eyes 

Bent to a vision from o'er the skies. 

And over life's flaw beheld it pass. 



39 



Walls of jasper and seas of glass, 

Palms of Victory, Lilies worn 

On Mary's Bosom when Christ was born, 

What man loves best, and holds most high 

Were met in the boy returned to die; 

Glowing, triumphant, and out of breath, 

The Royal Guest at this feast of Death. 

As a poet priest, or a painter paints 

The glorified images of saints. 

Where the sodden gray of life is told 

In glowing colours and words of gold, 

So the barefoot boy grew up August 

As a King's Son, guarding his Gallant Trust; 

Prince, above Prince of an ancient line. 

Royal in tatters — by Right Divine; 

Clothed in his Spirit Radiance, 

Highest and Noblest, First Born of France. 

So he stood with the men against the wall. 

Brave as a man, and half as tall; 

A thief, peradventure, but if a thief. 

One who was brave beyond belief ; 

If a thief, a thief who titanic grew 

On heights of the spirit into the blue; 

If a thief, a thief to whom Honour came 

With the God's Gift hidden in smoke and flame. 

And Death for a moment stayed his hand 

Ere he waved them forth to the unknown land; 

And stood still, tranced for a moment's space. 

Blinded by Splendour flung in his face ; 

Never before such light was drawn 



40 



From the founts of God beyond the dawn 

To fall on the ways of San Antoine. 

And never before a boy hath trod 

Such Royal Purple through Death to God. 

And the savage voice of Duty spoke, 

And the rifles answered through flame and smoke. 

Or bronze, or brass, or marble bleeds 

With words red dripping from gallant deeds, 

Deeds of heroes with sword and lance, 

Heroes of History and Romance 

Who fought for Honour, and fell for France. 

And the brass might laugh in exultant joy. 

Writ with the God's deed of the Boy, 

And the marble soften like wax to claim 

The indelible impress of his name. 

Now, the leash of Order, tighter drawn, 

Strangles the soul of San Antoine; 

And the tree with madness at its root, 

That bore for a day such golden fruit. 

Withered and dead and lopped away 

Lets in the bare, bleak light of day. 

And the Barricades no more are built 

By Radiant Madness and Splendid Guilt. 

But in San Antoine is Holy Ground, 

And here comes Honour, by Glory crowned. 

Where he threw his boy's all into the strife. 

His tattered and trampled Toy of Life. 

Ah, little Hero, with soul of flame. 

Where is the daybreak of thy Name 

To be largely written above by Fame; 



41 



To light the pathway of sun and star, 

To light our sordid earth from afar; 

The Torch of God, with its light intense, 

Overshining Magnificence. 

And the world forgets it; but I suppose 

Some One, Somewhere, Remembering Knows. 



42 



MARIE ANTOINETTE 

Hastens Night o'er star-sown summits, but her palHcl 

brows are drawn 
Tense in lines of frightened anguish; and her feet tread 

hard upon 
Feet reluctant, halt and trembling, the unwilling feet of 

Dawn. 

In that hour of august anguish when a God hung on the 

tree 
All the cosmic forces trembled; so they tremble now to 

see 
The accursed hour in birth pangs of this woman's Calvary. 

Where is God? Oh, where is He Who set this woman's 

feet upon 
Cloth of purple, golden blazoned, and the footsteps of a 

throne, 
That the splendour of her form might faintly figure forth 

His own. 

Where is God and where His Anger, that apocalyptic ire 
Sweeping o'er His fields of harvest, when the wings of 

Mercy tire; 
While the guilty stubble shrivels in its seven-times-heated 

fire? 

France has fiefed enfranchised Freedom, and the sovereign 
people claim 

43 



Royal blood to drench the altar they have builded in her 

name. 
Name of God invoked by devils, may it scorch them with 

its flame ! 

Hark! the jackals of the sewers hasten onward to their 

prey; 
Faggots from the devil's burning, spurned from hell, and 

gone astray; 
And the harlot, drunk with blood, shall drink of dearer 

blood today. 

Nothing doubt their brutish souls were filled with anger 

and surprise 
At the haughty pride that slumbered in the depths of 

those sad eyes. 
When the victim went a victor to the place of sacrifice. 

For the costly vase is shattered, and the sacred blood is 

spilt ; 
And the last black stone is set upon the house their hands 

have built; 
And the crimson knot is woven in the altar cloth of Guilt. 

Open wide, ye gates of darkness, where the damned in tor- 
ments dwell 

Shut to Hope with triple portals, when the son of Morning 
fell. 

That all hell rise up to meet them, when their souls go 
down to hell. 



44 



THE SONG OF RUPERT'S MEN 

There is blood on the grass, 

And a flame on the wind 
That leaps as we pass 

And follows behind; 
There's a ragged red spot 

On faces grown white, 
And eyes that see not 

Though they stare at the night. 
Let the Puritans wince 

At the gifts that we bring, 
Who follow the Prince 

For God and the King. 

From the mount where He trod 

When the Tables came down. 
The finger of God 

Points the rights of the Crown. 
Now God with Our Cause 

For Our Cause is His Own, 
For the King and the Laws, 

For the Church and the Throne. 
Then out with our swords ! 

Let the universe ring 
And reecho our words 

For God and the King. 

And here's to Another 
With glasses brimmed high, 



45 



The friend and the brother 

Who gives us to die. 
If Life shall betray 

With a sycophant's breath, 
Then huzza for the day 

Of Honour and Death. 
Come he soon, come he late, 

We care not, who fling 
Our defiance to fate 

For God and the King! 



46 



TO THE MEMORY OF ALFRED TENNYSON 

THIS DEDICATION OF THE ''dIVINE MESSAGE/' 

An UnHnished Poem. 

Strong Soul, that human and divine, 

With radiance ineffable 

Controlled my being with a spell, 
And bade a lesser light to shine. 

In one whose grief was overmuch 

Bound to base uses. One who saw 

Of his own soul the blot, the flaw, 
Yet felt upon his brow the touch, 

The seal of some diviner lips. 

The fiery and the cleansing pain. 

That draws the franchised soul again 
From the black caverns of eclipse. 

Yea, felt his soul a harp, whose strings 

Some God with careless fingers swept. 

Who half revealing, wholly kept 
His secret of eternal things. 

And in strange moods of thought unfurled. 

Past all the subtlest laws of art. 

Felt Universal Nature's heart 
Throb through the pulses of the world. 



47 



Forgive me, who have dared to lift 
My faltering voice in praise of Thee. 
For that it is, and can not be. 

Forgive the giver and the gift. 

Forgive me, that I strive to sound 
The strings which late your hands let fall. 
Forgive me, that I tread withal, 

Though softly, on this holy ground. 

For not with careless feet I stepped 
Across the grave, where long ago 
Went forth the strains of love and woe 

That make the name of Hallam wept. 

But with full reverence I trod, 
As one who at the altar kneels 
Awe-stricken, while the priest reveals 

The Body and the Blood of God. 



Here hast thou set the farthest bound 
Of Sorrow's wide and waste domains; 
Past which her writ no more obtains 

Where Silent, purple robed and crowned, 

She broods above the throngs that meet 
— From all the patient lands that cry 
To the inexorable sky — 

To lay their homage at her feet. 



48 



Within her sacred temple's porch, 
They come to pray or weep awhile. 
Or wait his coming with a smile, 

Who comes with his inverted torch. 

But few within her holies' place 

Shall stand to draw her veil away; 
Or see the fiery splendours play, 

Or the compassion of her face. 

Ah well for them, their brows forbear 
The guerdon of her glorious gain; 
Her fiery signet seal of pain, 

Her clinging chaplet of despair. 

'Tis well for them, they may not know 
That anguish, human and divine. 
Which set, an altar in a shrine. 

Thy apotheosis of woe. 



Dear Master, for whose reverend brow 
We wrought our wreath of palms or bays, 
To whom we brought such meed of praise, 

As merely mortals might avow. 

They were, who watchers of the night 
Beheld the Star rise in the east. 
They were, who bidden to the feast, 

Went forth with lamps trimmed and alight. 



49 



They were, whose hands with gladness told, 
To thee a shining rosary. 
Of gifts befitting them and thee, 

Their myrrh and frankincense and gold. 

But woe to me, whose soul too late 
Hath owned the influence of the star, 
And brought my laggards gifts from far 

To lay beside the folded gate. 



Yet should I stand on English ground, 
Methinks I scarce should think it strange 
To see thee standing, without change, 

Within thy star-encircled round. 

So hast thou stood within my sight. 
What time the patient stars came out, 
And kept long watch and ward about 

The sacred temples of the night. 

Nay, didst thou stand before my face 
Tonight in spirit, with thy soul 
Purged of the body's gross control. 

And fetterless of Time and Space, 

Impalpable unto my touch. 

But all the human shining through, 
The All Divine that veiled my view, 

I would not wonder overmuch. 



50 



Nay, scarce to see thy face beside 
A Face all tender and all grave, 
His Face, in Whom no part I have. 

The Face of Him I have denied. 

For so thy being's strength compelled 
My weakness. All my first and best, 
By thy diviner soul possessed, 

By thy diviner soul upheld, 

Grew from me farther and more far. 
Grew from me clearer and more clear, 
Grew to thee nearer and more near. 

The glow worm shining to the star. 

Dear are the claims of blood and birth; 
I claim thee by a dearer claim. 
From thee my soul derives the flame. 

Which surely is not all of earth. 

And if in these poor verses be, 

Mixed with much dross, some thought divine, 
The light with which it shines is thine, 

'Tis thine and hath its source from thee. 



Nor thy deserts, nor my desires. 

Have set my little best so low, 

Which should from higher heights bestow, 
The light bestowed of heavenly fires. 



51 



For I have burst the golden bars, 

The portals of the dawn, and pressed. 
Like him of old, unto my breast 

The death-keen lances of the stars. 

Might I a moment's space compel 
The God, whose fiery pulses roll 
In stormy tides about my soul. 

Half audible, half visible, 

Methinks my soul is not so base 

That thou wouldst scorn the song I bring, 

Nor pass, an unregarded thing. 
My leaf amidst your palms and bays. 

Of what avail, of what avail, 

From out the night no answers come. 
The voice of all the Gods is dumb; 

Old signs of hope and promise fail. 

For lapped among the dews and balms 
In lotos-eating bliss they lie. 
Or drunk with slumber's wine deny 

My song their laurel and their palms. 



Now thrice the English May hath strewn 
The hawthorn's snow upon the breeze. 
And thrice in England over seas 

The poppy's golden cup hath blown. 



52 



And thrice in Britain, east or west, 
Or old, or new, or where the day 
Steals from the night's embrace away. 

Or where the Sun God veils his crest, 

The holy bells of Christmas rang 

The angels' anthem back again; 

Their peace on earth, good will to men 
Since he hath gone from us who sang; 

The song that all our soul sufficed, 
The human song, the song divine, 
Drawn from deep founts of light that shine 

With splendour of the Risen Christ. 

He sang of love; and lo, the breast 

Of lovers, trembling in the bliss 

Of glorious insufficiencies, 
A higher, holier love confessed. 

He sang of woe; and we who trod 
In darkened ways, knelt to avow 
The august shadow on our brow, 

The shadow of the Soul of God. 

He sang of God; the conscious sky 

Grew quickened; and the light that not 
Of suns' and earths' embrace was got. 

The visible soul of the Most High 



53 



Went forth from its abiding place. 

The stars paled in that radiant dawn, 

And Mercy drew her veil upon 
Th' ineffable light we might not face. 

Alas for us, our souls are less 

That part of the harmonious whole, 
The soul compelling Over Soul 

Hath left its temples tenantless. 

White sheets of moonlight drifting by 
The sails of seas that lie beyond. 
The Light of England, waned and wanned. 

That some new star might shine on high. 



Dust unto dust. There comes a guest 
A lordly guest, who gives to keep 
The sacred burden of his sleep, 

To his own England's gentle breast. 

Sleep thou thy England's soil beneath; 
And Thou, whose generous bosom bore. 
Thou high and haughty heritor 

Of this divinest trust of Death; 

Oh, Britain, round whose brows are met 
The triple crowns; the trinity 
Of three in one, and one of three. 

Thy hundred warrior princes set. 



54 



Oh, England, England, his and mine ! 
Oh thou whose footsteps not in vain 
Divide the vexed and vexing main, 

Majestic Mother of a line 

In patience and in strength who pressed 
The steps of Freedom mounting higher, 
And fanned to flame the flickering fire 

Of sacred fury, in her breast ! 

Thy gracious claim of Motherhood; 
Our love that as a rock abides 
The shifting of the sands and tides. 

The righteous claim of Saxon blood. 

All cry for peace. Oh, not in vain. 
Though alien hands would rend apart 
The god-laid burthen on our heart, 

Our heritage of love and pain. 

To Saxon hearts where e'er they be. 
Who heart to heart, and soul to soul. 
Would keep our Saxon empire whole, 

Peace and good will across the sea. 



Stand thou with us, as we with thee. 
So shall we standing side by side. 
The realm of either world divide, 

From pole to pole, from sea to sea. 



55 



Oh, splendid dream! A God's desire, 

Drawn from deep draughts of heavenly springs, 

And soaring on exalted wings. 
Might set its radiant bounds no higher. 

An ancient right that we who trod 
The vintage of His wrath from yore, 
Who armed with strength and patience bore 

The delegated Will of God. 

While still a festering ill prolongs 
Its rule, and bankrupt justice fails. 
Should throw our swords into the scales 

That balance nations' rights and wrongs. 

The factor of divine events, 

'Tis ours to loose in peace or war. 
The crimson tangled knots that mar 

The web of His Divine Intents. 

Oh, might we bind the scattered rays 

Of Britain's glory into one; 

Her world wide lands, which not the sun 
Forsakes in all his circling ways; 

Then peace on earth, good will to men. 
Were not an idle shibboleth. 
Blown through the dusty lips of death. 

And drenched with Abel's blood again. 



56 



Nor Justice then a prince's fool, 
Nor Truth a servile lackey kept; 
But prince and people should accept 

God's Truth and Justice in our rule. 

Then should our will to judgment bring 
A princely war lord, grown o'er bold, 
Or bid a fretful people hold 

The tryst of ages with their King. 

Then on our all protecting shield 
Where frowned on gules the Gorgon's head, 
Should Truth and Justice rule instead. 

With Mercy on an argent field. 

So should our gracious influence draw 
The quickened nations in our track. 
And each to each should answer back 

In common speech and righteous law. 



Our lands are many, star on star. 
We called them from the purple shades, 
Through desert paths and forest glades. 

We set our ancient boundaries far. 

We gave our banners to the breeze, 
The seas divided and we passed; 
Our Flag from many a haughty mast 

Flung crimson lights on unknown seas. 



57 



We built in patience to endure. 

Against the years' corroding length 
We set the pillars of our strength, 

As pillars of the earth are sure. 

Oh, shall we shrink in craven fears 
At the long shadows lengthening fast, 
Of this our greatness grown so vast. 

And waxing with th' increasing years ! 

And we, shall we whose promise seemed 
The Covenant of God with man, 
Whose splendid purpose still outran 

The all that priest or poet dreamed ; 

Who led the foremost van that led 
The armies of the risen day, 
Turn from the gates of dawn away 

To walk with ghouls among the dead ? 

And bid the evil seeds that fell 

From hands forgotten — ashes — dust, 
Spring up a crop of hate and lust 

To glut the hungry maws of hell? 

Then are we lost. The moment nears. 
The serpent's subtle soul hath wound 
Its coils about the sky, and bound 

The kindly influence of the spheres. 



58 



For this were madness. This to tell 
The litany of devils taught. 
Oh, this were madness, hell begot, 

And spurned from out the gates of hell. 

That gives to alien hands to reap 
The gain of our ancestral field. 
That each may win, let either yield, 

And either give, that both may keep. 



Scourged with the angry Master's rod 
Be they who throng the venal mart 
And in His temple rend apart 

The veritable PEACE OF GOD. 

May ceaseless travail still bestead 
Their path, and of the mingled flood 
Of sweat upon their brow, may blood 

Commingle with their bitter bread. 

May still the pillars of Thy wrath. 

The blackening cloud of smoke by day. 
The nightly fire's consuming ray, 

With flame and blackness hedge their path. 

And weltering in a guilty flood 

Of dreams, that watch with them through night, 
May wild-eyed murder meet their sight, 

Bespattered with a kinsman's blood. 



59 



And mingling ever with' the groans 
And shrieks of battle, may they hear 
Throb through the ringing in their ear, 

With shrill, insistent monotones, 

A spirit whisper, keen and thin. 

Stabbed to the sense of heart and brain. 
And crying ever, *Thou art Cain, 

And none shall slay thee for thy sin." 

Set Thou their bed of death where none 
Shall close the faded orbs of sight. 
But stabbed with fiery pangs of light. 

And brazen lances of the sun. 

Wrench Thou the guilty soul away. 
That the death tainted body draw 
The jackals, striving tooth and claw 

With vultures, for th' accursed clay. 

Oh, Thou, to Whom our prayers were poured 
In every age, to Whom was spilt 
The Guiltless Blood, to purge our guilt, 

To Thee, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, 

To Thee we cry. Oh, hear us. Thou, 
Let not th' Unpardonable Sin 
Sprung from the gates of hell within 

Set her red mark upon our brow. 



60 



Nor madness stretching forth her hands, 
And groping for the Hght through dark, 
Set hands upon the hallowed ark 

That bears the Covenant of our lands. 

May rather chaos come again, 

And death and darkness through the spheres, 

Engulf their ancient barriers. 
The little lives of Gods and men. 



61 



GOD SAVE THE KING 

TO MOTHER ENGLAND. 

Mother of many men, 
Monarch in many lands, 
Mistress on many seas, 
Come now Thy sons again 
Proffering to Thy hands 
Mightier gifts than these. 

These be but leaves of rhyme, 
Fragile and faded leaves, 
Formless and incomplete. 
Never the hand of Time 
Binding them into sheaves 
Lays them before Thy feet. 

Comes with my less, a More; 
Comes with my least, a Most ; 
Comes with my part, a Whole. 
Comes to Thine ancient shore 
Gifts from a far-off coast. 
Gifts from a Nation's Soul.' 

Grief, with Thy Grief to rise ; 
Tears, with Thy Tears to fall ; 
Hope, with Thy Hope to spring 
Into the mourning skies 
Over the dead King's pall, 

Crying, GOD SAVE THE KING. 



62 



Hark I From an ancient height, 
Jubilant, clear and high, 
Shrilly the trumpets ring 
Ring for an Ancient Right, 
With an old battle cry 

Crying, GOD SAVE THE KING. 



63 



THE KING'S TRYST 

The Tryst of Widowed Lands 

The Wider Britain keeps. 
With faltering steps She stands 

On Her exulting steeps; 
She flings Her mourning bands 

Across Her subject deeps. 

The August Mother calls 
Her children o'er the tide; 

High are the ocean walls, 
The ocean walls are wide, 

But yet, what e'er befalls 
They hasten to Her side. 

At Britain's high behest 

From North and South they come; 
They come from East and West 

Swift foot across the foam; 
They gather to Her breast 

When Britain calls them Home. 

They come with flying feet, 
And eyes with tears grown dim ; 

From East and West they meet 
Upon the world's far rim; 

They pass with footsteps fleet 
To keep their tryst with Him. 



64 



Gifts for the Royal Dead 
From all the lands that lie 

Where Britain's Zone of Red 
Is bounded by the sky. 

Peace that may still bestead, 
And Love that shall not die. 

Peace ! Peace be with the Kin| 
Let jangling faction cease. 

Above His ashes fling 
The Flower of Civic Peace. 

So from His grave shall spring 
The Star of Christ's Increase. 



65 



THE MOTHER CALL 

Today a sudden splendour falls 

On castle, cot and dome. 
The little Island Empire calls 

Her wandering children home. 

The voice swept through the northern wold, 
The southern vales were stirred. 

Her thousand echoing hills retold 
The splendour and the word. 

The touch, divinely tender, filled 

The awed, expectant land, 
And alien heartstrings throbbed and thrilled 

Swept by the Master hand. 

The peaceful garden islands know 

The crowded camp's alarms. 
The trumpets' call, the watchfircs' glow, 

The clashing of the arms. 

But high, and clear and sweet, above 

The rattling of the guns. 
With Mother faith, with Mother love. 

The Mother calls her sons. 

"The ocean walls are strong and wide. 

And strong and wide the sea. 
And thrice a thousand leagues divide 

My absent sons from me. 



66 



"Come, Children of the Wandering Feet, 
Where e'er your footsteps roam. 

From alien field, from stranger street, 
Your Mother calls ye home. 

"I call ye from a stranger's land, 

To send ye forth again. 
I give ye with a Mother's hand 

To exile and to pain. 

*T set for ye a banquet board 
Where graves are dug beneath. 

Whereat from sanguine cups is poured 
The wild, sweet wine of death." 



The vintage of the Lord of Hosts 
Grows ripe on hill and plain. 

Reap thou his multitude of ghosts, 
His hecatombs of slain. 

Go forth, to make thy purpose good. 

Land of the Rising Sun. 
Of alien faith, of alien blood, 

Our will with thine is one. 

For valour, faith and mercy move 

Beneath the tawny skin. 
And kindred thoughts and actions prove 

How close we are akin. 



67 



Young Britain of the farther east, 
Thy golden spurs but won; 

Set thee triumphant o'er thy Feast 
Thy Risen Rising Sun. 



SONNET 

TO CROMWELL. 

Cromwell, the deep damnation of your name 

Outblackens Satan's in his subject land, 

Where doubly damned above himself you stand 
On inaccessible mountain peaks of shame 
Crowned with all final infamies of fame, 

Upon your brow the ineffaceable brand 

Of Cain thrice trebled, by an Angry Hand 
Scorched in immortal agonies of flame. 
Methinks my Lord of Darkness shall not love 

Your overlordly shadow near him thrown. 
Will you not call your parliament to prove. 

Oh Prince of Regicides, his right your own, 
And reign above your saints as once above 

Crowned, Damned and Hated, on your usurped throne? 

68 



ELIZABETH, THE QUEEN 

I, bastard born of that new royal blood 

That God hath set a space upon the throne 

Of Norman William; he, himself, like me, 

A bastard, born of the most basest blood 

That ever smirched the scutcheon of a King 

With the bar-sinister unspeakable. 

A tanner's daughter she, Arlotta hight 

That so her name might match the what she was. 

So doth that hell-smut blotch the blazoned shield 

Of this Leander of the narrow seas, 

Bearing his fame and infamy to clip 

His England, all unwilling, to his breast. 

I, too, would woo and win, and winning, wear 

My England on my bosom. Gifts I bring 

Perchance not all unworthy her and me. 

I wis my soul, man-statured, might aspire 

To tread the circles of the titan souls 

Of the great Edwards, heaping crown on crown 

To scale the summit of a God's desire. 

Mine is the people's voice, impetuous 

To crown a King or crucify a God. 

All rights are mine, save that Diviner Right 

Through which Kings hold their fiefs from God, and reign. 

Oh, this may not be mine ! I shall not hear 

The rustle of the Dove within the Tree 

With healing for the nations in its leaves. 

Oh, this may not be mine ! I shall not see 

The Shadow of the Soul of God that shines 



69 



Outshining lightnings, over and beyond 

My doubtful right, that shines upon the brow 

Of Wrong Undoubted; like the gems of paste 

That light the tangles of a strumpet's hair. 

Yet who should wear the crown? Not she of Scots! 

My younger cousin, with her Elder Right; 

That White Rose, shining from a thousand thorns 

That prick me to the bosom where a heart 

Should throb in the mere woman. I, the Queen, 

Th' Incarnate Soul of England, wear no heart 

To trip the nimble leaping of my brain. 

Myself am My Own Right, wherein I see 

The utmost present and the ultimate most 

Of good that is, and good that is to be 

To all this realm of England. Oh, My Land, 

Oh, My Dear England, Mother, Spouse, and Child, 

So help me the Most High, Who hears my vow, 

Myself am consecrate and set apart 

A vestal virgin to the sacred fire 

That burns upon the altar of my heart ! 

My strength shall gird thy weakness with a sword; 

My love shall light a pathway to thy feet; 

The purple of my robes shall cover thee 

To the last verge of thy extremest isle 

That stands a Maid of Honor to the Dawn, 

Or clasps the dying Sun God to her breast. 

Lo, I am I, the Queen, and with this ring, 

The shining symbol of Eternity, 

I wed thee on this night and in this place 

Where Death hath snapped the weaker links apart 



70 



That bound my sister to thee for her day. 

She hath loved much ; pray God that He forgive 

Her love that sowed the seeds of hate afar 

On wanton winds, the which ourselves shall reap 

That follow after. She hath made, in truth, 

Our England lackey in the halls of Spain, 

Serf to a tyrant master. By God's Death, 

We shall amend the master and the man 

To our complete contentment. We shall light 

A thousand candles, burning at the shrine 

Of Saint Elizabeth, the English Queen, 

Shall light our path across with-holden seas 

To Western Gardens, and their Fruit of Gold. 

The night steals on apace, the heavy night, 

For she hath watched and waited. The wan night 

Her face is pallid from a stress of awe; 

For she hath seen strange shadows rise and fall. 

And a great Shape that entered in the doors. 

And lordly strode through all these lordly halls 

Of England's Kings. The courtiers doffed their caps 

And louted low, as though the Queen did pass 

To that Majestic Presence, heralded 

By his two white-faced heralds, Pain and Fear. 

A Shadow bearing a Great Gift of Light 

To her who doffed the crown and passed with it 

Out from the radiance of the palace lights, 

The purple pomps, the gilded gauds of time, 

Into the gray and melancholy wastes. 

To reign, perhaps to serve, in those far lands 

That lie beyond the sun's light and the stars. 



71 



Oh, wert thou Tudor ? • Wert Plantagenet ? 
Wert of our House of Atreus, drenched with blood 
Of brother brother slain, who liest white 
Grown very meek and very patient now; 
Aye, patient to my presence, who wert wont 
To love not well my crescent shadow thrown 
Between thee and thine own decrescent light. 
But this is in the night, and of the night. 
And I am of the Dawn and Fiefed of Dawn 
With a Great Fief. I look in mine own soul 
As in a mirror, and therein I see 
Nan Boleyn's base-born daughter and The Queen 
Who shall leave England greater than she found. 



n 



THE GOLDEX ROSE 

TO H. R. II. THE PRINCESS HENRY OF BATTENBEKG. 

White Marvel of the Rose of God, 

The Rose of Certain Peace. It blew 

As Aaron's almond blossom grew 
In beauty from the barren rod. 

From death the miracle of birth ; 

The Hand that strikes us down, uplifts; 

The Giver gives His Radiant Gifts 
To these, His Chosen of the earth. 

And thou hast sought and found it far 

Where tropic jungles circle black 

In serpent coils about the track 
Of God's and Britain's righteous war. 

'Tis well that thou whose soul hath known 

A little while, no more should know 

The fretful ages' flux and flow 
That sap the pillars of a throne. 

Though Faction flap her fiery wings 
Where loyal Faith no more abides, 
Though Treason's bloody hand divides 

The purple raiment of her Kings, 



n- 



Thou wilt not know. Thy all complete, 
The leaf, the blossom and the gold 
Of harvest sheaves at noonday told 

Untimely, fall at Britain's feet. 

And she whose feet are steadfast in 
The paths of empire, she shall keep 
A moment tryst with Death, to weep 

The Warrior Prince that might have been. 



High Princess ! Princess yesterday; 
Today a Widow, come too late 
To kneel beside the folded gate 

Whence none may roll the stone away. 

Lo ! Thou art Royal ; dust indeed. 
But Royal Dust; the laboring earth 
In stronger travail gave thee birth; 

And Higher Light informed thy need. 

For thou art of the stately stem 
That lifts its lofty branches high ; 
The earth, their heritage; the sky, 

A royal canopy to them. 

Now art thou near to us; the Touch, 
The Christ-like Touch upon thy brow 
Absolves the subjects' straightened vow 

To one who loves and sorrows much. 



74 



And we, whose father's fathers bled 
For thine, may bring our offerings 
Of sorrow to the hall of Kings, 

And mourn with thee beside thy dead. 

Oh, we were brutish, misbegot, 

Nor in our veins the loyal flood 

Of unforgetting Saxon blood 
That makes us one, had we forgot 

The Good Queen's gracious deed, that gave 
— The Signet Seal of Christ's Increase 
The Certain Knot of Love and Peace — 

The wreath for Martyred Garfield's grave. 

Take, Madame, then from o'er the sea 
These frail and faded leaves of rhymes; 
Though they were trebled twenty times 

Alike unworthy Thine and Thee. 

Yet haply may they serve to tell. 
If blown by ocean winds they fall 
Within thy ancient castle's wall. 

That Saxon love remembers well. 

God's Grace go with thee to ensure 
The splendid sorrows of thy lot, 
His Patience and His Strength. "Break not. 

For thou art Royal, but endure." 



75 



TO RUDYARD KIPLING 

With a battle axe for pen 

Flashed above the heads of men, 
With thy soul's poetic passion to a Berserk fury growing, 

Sir, thy words are rough hewn Facts, 

Stamping on the yielding wax 
Of our memory, thy rubric tangled in its crimson glowing. 

Nothing doubt our envious bays 
Fall before thee on thy ways. 
We, man milliners of Art, who prink and prank and prune 
and polish 

At our fragile flowers of rhyme. 
Sown upon the shores of Time, 
That tomorrow's sun shall wither, and tomorrow's waves 
demolish. 

Yet my soul may stand with thine 

On the heights we deem divine. 
And, grown up to equal stature, may reach out and call 
thee Brother; 

Equal by the gracious laws 

Of the kindred blood that draws 
Thee and me in adoration to the Great Majestic Mother. 

We're for England ! Thou and I ; 
We're for England ! Throned high ; 
We're for England ! In Her ancient robes and with Her 
antique Honour; 

7(i 



We're for England ! At Her hearth ; 
We're for England ! Round the earth ; 
We're for England ! With Her Triple Crowns and All 
Her Crowns upon Her. 

Here's to England ! Glasses brimmed. 
Here's to England ! With eyes dimmed 
By the stormy waves that break against the heights of our 
emotion. 

Here's to England ! Brother, drink, 
Standing each upon the brink 
h'^arther East and farthest Westward of Her tributary 
ocean. 



77 



A DREAM OF ITALY 

Peace on the earth, and on the waters Peace; 

In yonder cloudless heavens above us, Peace ; 

And Peace with him who slumbers at my side, 

The boy companion of my lonely way 

To this untaken fortress of the hills 

That guards Balboa's ocean. Lo, he lies 

In that dim border and debatable land 

That owns the equal sway of those great lords 

Whom men call Life and Death. Above him now 

The shadow of their cognizance is thrown 

Or roses white, or roses red, that pale 

Or flush above the olive of his face. 

So doth he lie, a dream within a dream, 

A charmed prince in an enchanted land. 

From which myself might draw him to my side 

— The devious ways by which he went made straight 

For his returning feet — did I but place 

My hand upon his brow, become august 

With the compelling dignities of Sleep. 

And he would wake and smile, and smiling speak 

In those soft sibilant accents that I love; 

In hearing which my soul perchance would see 

The God-blown Bubble of the Lordly Dome 

That floats above the Tiber, o'er the dust 

That once was Rome — and still is Italy. 

I am not alien to this land that lies 

A wedge of emerald thrust between her walls 

Of sapphire seas. Myself am native here; 



78 



I leap the Rubicon of alien blood 

Too shallow to divide myself from Her, 

My Soul and Spirit Mother. Oh, Beloved! 

Oh, Well Beloved ! Oh, Best Beloved Thou ! 

What shall I bring Thee from my human love 

That wanders lost upon the soaring heights 

Of a God's adoration? Naught but these? 

Naught but these flawed futilities of Art? 

This rainbow's ladder, broken at the base 

In seven-hued toppled steps I may not climb. 

Naught but these airy capitals that fell 

From broken columns of my hall of dreams 

Wherein my soul may never hope to dwell. 

Naught but these minor melodies of song 

That shall not reach thine ears of royalty 

Attuned to statelier measures. Naught but these? 

To lay beside the gifts the Magi bring 

From all the wider east where God is born 

Incarnate in each new-born Poet's breast. 



''9 



HENRY V OF FRANCE 

King upon whose sacred brow 
Ne'er the sacred oil was spilt, 
In High Houses God hath built 

Over Prince and people, thou 

Standest God Anointed now. 

King ! A nation's cornerstone 
That the builders threw aside, 
Crovv^ning guilty Regicide ; 

Claimest thou on high thine own, 

Reigning on a spirit throne. 

Thou, too, on thy Lupercal, 

With a more than Caesar's frown 
Flung aside the people's crown, 
Unsubservient to their call 
For a crowned and sceptred thrall. 

Not the franchise of the base. 
Not the scarlet suffrage drawn 
From the sin of San' Antoine 
Soiled the glory and the grace 
Of the last flower of thy race. 

Clothe thee in Thy Right anew ; 

Crushed by Time — and Royal still ; 

Treason trampled — but God's V/ill ; 
And thy Royal White that grew 
Over rebel red and blue. 



80 



Standing in the sight of God 
Render back His Gift August, 
Stainless held by thee in trust; 
Steps unto a throne untrod 
But thy feet by Honour shod. 

Bear to Henry, Great and Good, 
Thou, too, Henry Good and Great, 
Held above the reach of Fate 
Thy unswerving rectitude. 
And thy stainless Kinglihood. 

King! Rejected and denied; 

King! Rejecting and denying; 

King ! Defeated and defying. 
Casting a base crown aside. 
Placing Honour above pride. 

Unto thee we bring our vows, 
Pledging ancient faith anew; 
God is with His Chosen Few, 
We who come to bend our brows 
To the King Crowned in God's House. 



81 



THE GHOST OF ITYS 

Hark! 'Tis the nightingale. 

What floods of wailing, 
What storms of grief assail 

The heavens, scaling 
A God's despair, or fail 

Sadder in failing. 

Seest thou incarnate song 
And soul of grieving. 

That horror haunted wrong 
Beyond retrieving. 

Shall not the ages long 
Soothe thy bereaving? 

Seest thou in this fair wood 
That hears thy singing, 

The Thracian halls that stood 
With terrors ringing. 

And to thy solitude 
The Furies winging? 

Still, in thy forest green. 

Lies Itys dying. 
Still o'er the charmed scene 

His ghost is flying. 
Still, rose and thee between. 

His soul is sighing. 



82 



A HEALTH TO THE KING 

OF PORTUGAL. 

A health to the King, 

A health to the Boy, 
Though boyish he fling 

His Crown as a toy, 
With his sceptre and ring 

On the bosom of Joy. 

Shall no blossom of May, 
And no breath of the Spring, 

And no dawn of the Day, 
And no flash of Love's wing 

Be flung on the way 

Of the Boy — grown a King? 

For the King is but man 
That Her bosom that bore 

Shall resume in a span; 
But the Kingship is more, 

And the Top of God's plan 
From His days of Before. 

Go forth in God's Might, 
For His trumpets are blown, 

And the land is alight 

With the fires He hath sown. 

In His Might and Thy Right 
Enter in to Thine Own. 

83 



Crush down with thy heel 
The traitors who trod 

With the flashing of steel 
And feet bloody shod, 

O'er the faithful who kneel 
At the altars of God. 

A health to the King, 

The King by God's Grace. 

May His Providence bring 
The King to his Place, 

New splendour to fling 
On the past of his race. 



84 



FRANCIS I AT PAVIA 

All day upon that fatal day, the stroke of sword and lance 
Fell thickest, where, through smoke and flame, flamed, 

ever in advance. 
The lilies on his breast before the lily flag of France. 

His arms above the arms of France, upon his breast were 

crossed. 
The victor's banners flaunting free, above the King were 

tossed, 
The King, who left that fatal field, with all but honor lost. 

Came one who stood before the King, reluctantly who 

came. 
Of equal lofty majesty, his cognizance the same. 
And King's blood struggled in his cheek, against a flush 

of shame. 

De Bourbon bowed his haughty head; he faltered where 

he stood, 
Before that flower of chivalry, that crov/n of Kinglihood ; 
That star upon the brow of France and kinsman of his 

blood. 

The King and traitor face to face ! A moment as of old. 
Distilled from poisoned depths of hate, the monarch's 

words were told. 
De Bourbon drank the bitter draught and shivered with its 

cold. 

85 



"Fair fall thee, gentle cousin, as thou fairly com'st to 

bring 
Upon the field where fortune fails, the double offering 
Of love unto thy kinsman's heart, and homage to thy King. 

"Nay, cousin, lift that lofty head that bends so low to me. 
Thy haughty heart and victor hand absolve thy subject 

knee. 
Enfiefed by fickle fortune thou, the King must bend to 

thee." 

He turned in scorn and gave his sword to one obscure, 

unknown. 
Who on his bended knee received and gave the King his 

own. 
To whom the King, with Kingly grace, and unforbidding 

tone, 

"Now, by the crown I lose this day, and by my father's 

land. 
When traitors kneel, it well becomes thy honesty to 

stand." 
He bent with princely courtesy and raised him by the hand. 



86 



AT THE TOURNAMENT 

Comes now My Lord of Death, his pennon flying; 

Sans cognizance 
Upon his sable armour; loud defying 

With sword and lance 
My Lord of Life, with enmity undying, 

And a I'outrance. 

Comes forth My Lord of Life, his armour gleaming. 

But over light; 
In all the galliard grace of youth, beseeming 

A gallant knight. 
The legend of his house above him streaming, 

"Mine Ancient Right." 

They meet, as meet two rival bolts of thunder 

In a black sky. 
As the red flash that tears the skies asunder, 

Their swords flash high. 
They fall. Alas ! My Lord of Life falls under. 

So fair to die. 

'Tis o'er. The final coup de grace is given. 

Let the bells toll; 
Let lighted candles show him way to heaven, 

While priests make dole ; 
His guilty soul hath passed away unshriven. 

God rest his soul ! 



87 



AVE ATQUE VALE 

The autumn is dead, 

And the year Hes a-dying, 
Where yellow and red 

The sere leaves are flying. 
They cover him up as-a pall, while the winds of the winter 
are sighing. 

They have made him a bed; 

They have pranked it with holly ; 
With berries of red 
To slay Melancholy. 
Ye fools ! She will rise from her grave, though you bury 
her deep in your folly. 

He came to the crown 

In the midst of our cheering ; 
To death he goes down 

With O'ur wailing or jeering; 
The Boy King we set on the throne of his sires with 
caresses endearing. 

A health to the King 

Who comes on the morrow, 
From flagons that fling 
Defiance to sorrow. 
The wine of the present is ours, and the wine o-f the 
future we borrow. 



A health to the King 

From glasses of gladness. 
His coming shall bring 
Surcease to our sadness. 
Let us eat of the fruit of Desire and be drunk with the 
wine of our madness. 



SONNET 

Oh, might I fling my heart beneath thy feet 
Shod with the radiant gladness of the dawn, 
Despoiled from eastern hill and dewy lawn. 

Thrice happy dawn ! Thrice happy earth to greet 

Thy footsteps, with new flowers springing fleet. 
Thrice happier I, from barren heights withdrawn, 
To give my heart for thee to tread upon. 

Ah, it were sweet ! Ah, it were passing sweet ! 
Natheless. my soul above me weighs aright 

Thy lesser soul, that stinted, starved and doled. 
Strives with its farthing rush-light in the night. 

I, set above thee, crowned with light from old. 
Stoop down adoring from an ancient height 

To clip, and crown thee with my Shower of Gold. 



89 



THE RED ROSE OF EARTH 

God's Benison upon the Boy 
With boyish grace who came 

An apotheosis of Joy 

That scorched me as with flame. 

A wave of sorrow swept my soul, 
My eyes with tears grew dim. 

Oh God ! What seas of silence roll 
Between myself and him. 

The morning blossoms in his eyes. 

Shall not, beneath his feet 
The purple hyacinth arise 

The Sun God's eyes to meet? 

Myself am franchised in the stars; 

My fingers free upon 
The key to loose the morning's bars 

And usher in the dawn. 

Yet, though I draw him to me close 

With pressure of the hand, 
And match my Star with his Red Rose, 

He would not understand. 

I watch from alien heights afar 

My kindly Halls of Birth ; 
And I would give my farthest Star 

For his Red Rose of Earth. 



90 



OUR LADY OF THE GATE 



TO SAN FRANCISCO. 



While still the pillars of the earth endure 

The deep foundations of Her house are sure. 

Though the red flag of cosmic hate unfurled 

Flash through the caverns of the underworld; 

Though Titans struggling in the primal deeps 

Fling hill on hill, to gain Her sun-crowned steeps, 

Still shall She reign, Our Lady of the Gate, 

Where all things enter, come they soon or late. 

Still North and South, still East and West shall meet 

To lay their vassal homage at Her feet. 

Still Time, Her handmaid, gather to Her hands 

The sea-flung tribute of Her subject lands. 

Oh Thou, beloved ! Mother of many men, 

Strong sons, who build Thy broken walls again, 

Who with enduring labor set the base 

Of all Thy Future in its ancient place. 

Temples to Hermes shall they build, to meet 

The needs that spring beneath his winged feet. 

Yet at those altars, where the God receives 

The tangled vows of traders and of thieves, 

Yea, even there, diviner, drifted down 

From higher heights, a higher light may crown. 

Oh, may that Flower of Beauty that was Greece, 

That Star of Splendour that was Rome, increase. 

And bloom familiar round Thy wonted ways. 

And shine above Thee with serener rays. 

So shalt Thou hear, the while Thy walls aspire. 

The throbbing music of the Sun God's lyre. 



THE GOD ON HORSEBACK 

A wind grows out of the breeze 
And lashes the frightened trees, 
Till they cry out loud in their pain, 
Till they cry tO' the wind in vain; 
And the wind complains to the seas. 

And the notes of an old refrain 
Rise clear above wind and rain. 

And the pulse of my soul is stirred 

By a melody long unheard, 
That calls to me not in vain. 

And I see him once more, as when 

I saw him before me then, 

When he touched for a moment's space 
My life with his strength and grace, 

And rode from my life again. 

A gallant and boyish form, 

In the breath of the south wind warm 

That toyed with his tumbled hair ; 

That kissed him and found him fair, 
As he spurred in front of the storm. 

He leaned from his seat, and cast 

A smile at me as he passed. 

And the lust of Life and the pride 
Of the Boy God, spurred and astride. 

Thrilled like a clarion's blast. 



92 



Ah, little Ghost, when we stand 
With the ghosts, in No Man's Land, 
Will yon come with boyish grace, 
With the old smile on your face, 
And greet me, and understand ? 



SONNET 

Have at you, sir, again ! Your walls are high. 

I, disinherited and dispossessed, 

Unwelcome suitor and unbidden guest, 
The jest of some mad Boy God in the sky. 
Yet shall I enter in; I, even L 

I, set apart by some supreme behest. 

By all the Splendid Madness in my breast. 
To win your walls, and higher walls, or die. 

Scorn not to meet me. No unknightly lance 
Of border foray seeks this stricken field; 

Forged on the ringing anvil of Romance, 
In the hot furnaces of Grief annealed. 

With it I seek My Own, which lies, perchance, 
In yonder frowning castle keep concealed. 



93 



FEET OF CLAY 

I said, "I will fashion a god, 

And worship it in a shrine. 
I am weary of staff and rod 

And the touch of the All Divine. 
I have clutched at the morning's bars 

When the gates were flung apart. 
I have drawn the light of the stars 

Like lances, unto my heart. 
I am weary, and now, meseems, 

I should live my life while I may." 
And I fashioned it in my dreams. 

And the feet of the idol were clay. 

And beautiful to behold 

The glorious image grew. 
And the hair was brown or gold, 

And the eyes were brown or blue. 
And it was absolute good 

As deep as my eyes could see. 
And truer than truth it stood 

For that it was truth to me. 
And the work of my hands was sweet, 

I worshipped it night and day. 
And I flung my soul at its feet, 

And the feet of the idol were clay. 

And they mocked the work of my soul 
As faulty and incomplete. 



94 



With the human part of the whole, 

And the stain of earth on the feet. 
And I said to them, "Misbegot ! 

Beggars in brain and in soul ! 
I love it for what it is not, 

And not as a perfect whole." 
And I said, "I will have my will. 

Pharisees, go your way. 
I will love and worship it still," 

And the feet of the idol were clay. 



95 



TO ONE WHO KNOWS 

I thank thee, dear, for coming in the night 

To him who loved thee in remembered days 

Beyond thy comprehension or desire. 

Yea, I did know in that vast loneHness 

That crowds my steps upon the barren heights, 

Where Absolute Sorrow, purple-robed and crowned. 

Broods o'er the crowding throngs that pay their tithes 

Of sweat and tears at all her wayside shrines. 

That thou wouldst come; that thou wouldst surely seek 

Him who might seek thee not. And I rejoice 

That not the august music of the spheres 

That rolls its surges on the farthest shores 

Of space illimitable, taught thine ear. 

With its diviner thunder to forget 

The minor mellow melodies of earth. 

Blew not some breeze across some charmed land. 

Through some enchanted gates of long ago, 

Through which our lingering feet, with morning shod, 

Our foreheads garlanded with dews and balms. 

Passed through the gates of dawn, to where a bow 

Spanned all our heavens, and lit our path on earth 

That thus I saw thee, as in truth I saw. 

Thou, all thyself, thou, all and only mine. 

Thou, as I knew thee, flawed with the sweet flaw, 

The gracious birth bark of our Mother Earth, 

That sets the jewel nearer and more dear. 



96 



TO SAN FRANCISCO 

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, 'twas the ghost 

of a dream; for I vow 
By the splendour of God in the highest, we never have 

loved Her till now. 
When Love bears the trumpet of Honour, oh, highest and 

clearest he calls, 
With the light of the flaming of towers, and the sound 

of the rending of walls. 
When Love wears the purple of Sorrow, and kneels at 

the altar of Grief, 
Of the flowers that spring in his footsteps, the white 

flower of Service is chief. 
As a flower on the snow of Her bosom, as a star in the 

night of Her hair, 
We bring to our Mother such token as the time and the 

elements spare. 

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, adoring we 

kneel to Ller now. 
When the golden fruit of the ages falls, swept by the 

wind from the bough. 
The beautiful dv/elling is shattered, wherein, as a queen 

at the feast, 
In gems of the barbaric tropics and silks of the ultimate 

East, 
Our Mother sat throned and triumphant, v/ith the wise 

and the great in their day. 
They were captains, and princes, and rulers ; but She, She 

was greater than they. 

97 



We are sprung from the builders of nations; by the souls 

of our fathers we swear, 
By the depths of the deeps that surround Her, by the 

height of the heights She may dare. 
Though the Twelve league in compact against Her, though 

the sea gods cry out in their wrath. 
Though the earth gods, grown drunk of their fury, fling 

the hilltops abroad in Her path. 
Our Mother of masterful children shall sit on Her throne 

as of yore, 
With Her old robes of purple about Her, and crowned 

with the crowns that She wore. 

She shall sit at the gates of the world, where the nations 

shall gather and meet, 
And the Ea"st and the West at Her bidding shall lie in a 

leash at Her feet. 



98 



CHI-CA-GO! CHI-CA-GO! 

AT SAN FRANCISCO^ APRIL 18, 1906. 

When the long appointed Morning from the primal deeps 

awoke ; 
When the Guilty Hour of God released the Moment and 
the Stroke, 

Then the human ant hill stirred, 
And it trembled as it heard 
O'er the wreck and wrack of matter, the deep thunder of 

God's Word 
In reverberating echoes, o'er a hell of flame and smoke. 

Here was touchstone for the Human. Fear and Terror 
unconfined 

From the soul's supreme dominion and the leashes of the 
mind, 

Drove them forth and backward, drove 
Them in broken waves, that strove 

In the vortex of a whirlpool, neath the flaming skies 
above. 

But serene, clear-eyed and steadfast, there was one re- 
mained behind. 

And the shattered walls about him groaned and trembled 

as he bent 
In apocalyptic vision o'er the shining instrument; 
While he strove, with vain essay 
To control the rebel ray, 
To Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go, two thousand miles away. 
And the trembling wires refused to take the message that 
he sent. 

99 



Oh, he wrought with steadfast fingers, and a soul uncon- 

quered still. 
While the tempest stormed the lowland and swept onward 

to the hill. 

While the flame of dot and dash 
Answered to a redder flash 
From the flaming towers and steeples, punctuated by a 

crash. 
And the rebel lightning flickered, unsubservient to his 

will. 

Then Pity's eyes grew dim with tears, and Mercy's heart 
was stirred; 

And the Soul of God grew troubled at the lightning- 
tangled word; 

At the Human cry that came 
Up to Him on wings of flame, 

Crying out, "Help, Help !" to Brothers, in the Great All 
Father's Name. 

And that cry of August Sorrow, with its solemn meaning 
blurred. 

And He spoke unto the lightning and it hastened to obey; 
And the letters formed like soldiers, in an orderly array; 
And they hastened by God's Grace 
O'er the lands of conquered Space, 
And the world fell back behind them, in the fury of the 

race 
To the gates of Human Brotherhood, two thousand miles 
away. 



loa 



OUR LADY OF THE DOME 

The God has spoken ! Be it so. 

Let not the shrines of Hermes fail 
Of all we hold most dear, although 

We give our honour with this sale. 

Are loyal faith and honour more, 
Are they as much as fallen leaves 

From last year's wind storm, cast before 
The god of traders — and of thieves. 

Despoiled of all that once we were; 

Of all that once was ours bereft; 
The' all of all our past was there. 

This crown upon our brows was left. 

Unmoved before the shock that sapped 
The pillars of the earth, she stood. 

And watched the flood of flame that lapped 
Her sky-aspiring altitude. 

With patient and with steadfast eyes, 
Through murky day and fire-sown night, 

She saw the star of hope arise, 
And dark delivered of the light. 

And now, from her abiding place 

Cast down, and thrown as so much dirt 

To traders in the market place ! 
Oh, high and over Gods avert 



101 



The shorter shrift of ruffian hand, 
The captive queen to traders cast. 

The Future withers of that land 
That sells the altars of its Past. 

Oh, were there men, among the men 
Who grasp with mailed hand the Now, 

Would rather purchase of the Then 
Her laureled franchise for their brow ! 

Ah, that indeed a gracious gift. 
And that in truth the fairies' gold, 

Crowned, throned, and sceptred, to uplift 
Our Lady to her place of old. 

Or, on supremer heights to stand 
O'er the new altars of our home. 

From frozen heart and ruffian hand 
God Save Our Lady of the Dome. 



102 



THE ROSE OF PEACE 

TO A CHILD DEAD AT THE FOOT OF SEVENTH STREET^ 

SAN FRANCISCO. 

From some fair heavens the sudden splendour fell, 
Some gracious fingers wove the hidden spell, 
Wrought some compassionate god this miracle. 

Whence camest thou? What gardens of delight 
Gave thee to earth, to grow up tall and white. 
Bear bud and blossom in a single night? 

Doubt not thy life was drawn of heavenly dew, 
Down filmy web of rainbows, falling through 
On this old Rose of Peace, forever new. 

Here, where the foul and noxious vapours creep, 
Like poisonous serpents, from the ooze and seep 
That sap the city's rotting refuse heap; 

Here, the great Master molds His crudest clay. 
His wheels revolving swiftly, night and day, 
Turn out His image, grim and gaunt, and gray. 

Yet here was holy ground; a moment's space 
So gracious and so hallowed was the place. 
That I, the lonely passer, veiled my face. 

And faltered, lest I tread too hard upon 

His noiseless steps, whose fingers thin and wan 

Unbar to us the gateways of the dawn. 

103 



Strange that my memories linger 'round the spot, 
Which doubtless she who bore him hath forgot, 
While I, who knew him not, forget him not. 

And still I wonder, as I wondered then, 
To feel the gush of sudden tears again, 
Th' unwonted and unwilling tears of men. 

Oh, little ghost, that flitted wan and white 
Between the purple curtains of the night. 
Oh, younger brother, with my elder right; 

Oh, child, whose widely wandering footsteps cease 
To tread the path where days and years increase. 
Clasp the white marvel of your Rose of Peace. 

But I, whom not the toys of time beguiled, 
God help me that I envied this dead child, 
Passing from all defilement, undefiled. 

Oh, Thou, divine, serene, compassionate, 
I may not seek Thee, but I watch and wait 
To see Thee beckon from the eternal gate. 

Not long. I see the bow of promise shine; 
My certain covenant with the Soul Divine ; 
What God I know not, but the Gift is mine. 



104 



THE TRYST OF FATE ' 

"I have never seen you do aught hut laugh. 
Play day love^ could you laugh ziith me 
If ive stopped the doing of things by half— 



Play day comrade, awake from sleep, 

There is work to do, and a tryst to keep. 

We must be far when morning spills 

His cup of light on the eastern hills. 

Thou and I until we stand 

Free and fiefed in no man's land. 

Wake ! There is one who stands beside 

Thy bed, who may not be denied. 

Though thou set thy soul upon the chance 

Of the loaded dice of circumstance. 

Still it must be, as it was before, 

Thou the lesser, and I the more. 

So all our yesterdays have proved 

Me the lover, and thee the loved. 

Bend thy soul to my stronger will. 

Thou wert mine of old, and I claim thee still. 

Mine in body and soul and breath. 

In our yesterdays of life and death. 

And ever through cycles of the sky 

Still thou wert thou, and I was I. 

And boy and boy, or man and maid. 

Our souls stood naked and unafraid. 

And our myriad lives clasped hands, I wis, 

To lead our steps to a night like this. 



105 



Gently, gently, lest we -awake 

Eyes to weep, and hearts to break; 

Lest their woman's weeping and woman's prayers 

Clutch at my purpose unawares. 

And the splendid madness of our dream 

Burst like bubbles upon the stream. 

'Tis bravely done. Your careless stride 

Keeps us together, side by side, 

To the boat that struggles on the tide. 

That flutters a bird with a broken wing; 

That strains at its leash, a living thing. 

There in the mirk of the fading town, 

The lights of the well-lost world go down. 

And the rags of life that we flung behind 

Flaunt their littleness down the wind. 

And the tattered banners of the storm 

Flaunt in front of the south wind warm 

And the waves in their white-lipped anguish cry 

To an angry God in an angry sky. 

And ever we settle as we drift 

For the sea flows in through flaw and rift. 

And the wine of Being disappears 

From the broken cup of your twenty years. 

Scarce have you pressed your lips of flame 

To its splendid sin and sorrow and shame. 

Now night draws down and the lights burn low, 

Play day love, it is time to go. 

A swirl of waters, a gasp for breath. 

And the wide, free liberty of death. 



106 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

The master of a double art, 

He bore the gifts to make man whole; 

His tears and laughter for the soul, 
A potion for the body's smart. 

If not the highest, yet so high. 

So clear and sweet his message rang, 
If not a priest or prophet sang 

Yet the whole world was more thereby. 

And the sad age forgot awhile 

Her sweat and tears, and stopped to quaff 
The mellow music of his laugh. 

And answered to it with a smile. 

And yet, methinks, he might have built 
Those Statelier Mansions for his art, 
Whereon the sweat of soul and heart 

About the corner stone are spilt. 

He, fiefed in yonder blue serene ; 

He, free beyond the morning bars ; 

He, franchised in the farther stars. 
And the wide spaces in betw^een. 

Here had he with firm footstep trod. 
Here had he swept the so'unding lyre. 
Whose waves of thunder and of fire 

Surge upwards to the feet of God; 

107 



But that he chose of his" own will 

To heal the grievous wounds of man; 
To walk the Good Samaritan, 

And gentle healer of the ill; 

To pour the balsam of his mirth, 
Free flowing from the lesser fount 
Sprung midways on the sacred mount, 

Upon the tired heart of earth. 

Perchance, he chose the better part. 

And ye, who knew and loved him, bring 
The first arbutus of the spring 

To lay above his gentle heart. 



108 



THE DIVORCE 

"Mr. Death, you're a lawyer of well-known repute, 

Your practice extensive. I bring you my suit. 

I had sought you so long that my hopes had grown dull, 

When I saw on your doorways the crossbones and skull. 

My name is, or rather, my husband's is, Life. 

And I am, or rather, I have been his wife. 

'Twas a match that I sought not. My parents, in truth, 

Limed the bird, set the trap, forged the chains for my 

youth. 
What I want? Oh, 'tis only the old tale, of course, 
I am tired of my husband, and seek a divorce." 
"I well know your husband. In truth, I may say 
That I own his estates. As you know, he's quite gay. 
They are heavily mortgaged ; his assets are nil 
If I chose to foreclose, as I possibly will." 
"In the meanwhile, I hope — may I hope? — you will choose 
To press my case for me. You will not refuse? 

For the fee " "Oh, I charge a high price, to be sure. 

But the game's worth the candle. I'm certain to cure. 

In fact, I may say, without any restraint. 

When I'm done with a client he ne'er makes complaint. 

For the cause of your action — I ask, though I know, 

Incompatible — each of you — mutually so." 

"Oh, you've told it yourself. He's too florid, too gay. 

Too gaudy of night, and too tawdry of day. 

Our union was cursed with the curse of the Lord. 

I shrink from his bed, and I starve at his board." 

"What ! he starves you ?" "Ay, starves me — that is, on 

the whole 

109 



He feeds up my body, and starves down my soul. 

He serves me three courses — fear, pain and despair, 

Washed down with a draught of the black wine of care. 

But the dew on the blossom, the sun on the dew. 

The blue of the sky, and a star in the blue, 

The gold-spangled dust on the butterflies' wings. 

The grace of all gracious, intangible things. 

These fail from his menu. In truth, he don't know. 

Is the fault his or mine? God hath fashioned him so." 

"Your case is a sad one, but old as the earth. 

It clutched at your soul through the gateways of birth; 

It followed your footsteps wherever you trod; 

The ghost of yourself, and the Shadow of God. 

Have patience a moment, and know that the doors 

Of my office swing wide, to such cases as yours. 

I will draw up your papers, and seal with my seal 

That bars change O'f venue, admits no appeal ; 

That no court can annul, when the sentence is spoke ; 

Nor the juggling of lawyers rescind, nor revoke. 

Tomorrow we seek His Superior Court, 

The last high tribunal of Human resort. 

But the Judge, though a just One, is known as severe. 

And I fear that you " "No, friend, fear not that I fear. 

With his ring did he wed me, who holds me with chains ; 
He won me as bride; as a slave he retains. 
Break the chains! Set me free, and my soul will rejoice 
In His lightning of eye and His thunder of voice. 
If His justice avails not. His charity fails, 
I will throw my despair 'gainst His wrath in the scales." 
"Till we meet then, adieu." "Au revoir, not adieu. 
Since I seek on the morrow His courtroom with you." 

110 



TO AMBROSE BIERCE 

For that I came to you a guest, 

Where guest unbid might haply meet 
Small place whereon to set his feet, 

And scanty furtherance of his quest; 

For that to one ill used to sue. 

Who deemed his suit, perchance, o'er bold 
From high and kindly heart you told 

Largesse of praise beyond his due. 

I thank you ; were my thoughts but deeds, 
Or might I cancel deed with thought, 
Then of my thanks to you were wrought 

The full contentment of your needs. 



'Tis well. I will not make my Art 
The jester in the people's court; 
Nor bid the Goddess born resort 

A harlot to the public mart. 

God wot, I enter not the race 

For large success and honour scant, 
The apotheosis of Cant, 

The Triumph of the Commonplace, 

Methinks, such race were well unrun. 

The God may vanish whence He came. 

And I, I quit the losing game, 
Scarce worth the winning — if I won. 

Ill 



"AH, GIVE US BUT YESTERDAY!' 

The night has fled before him ; 

And the victor sun is borne, 
Robed and crowned in royal splendour, 

Through the gateways of the morn; 
With his cloth of gold before me. 

Yet my sad heart turns away 
Wounded by the golden lances 

Of the sun of Yesterday. 

The morning light is gleaming, 

And the morning dew impearled 
On the golden roses clinging 

Round the roof-tree of the world. 
But I turn in heart-sick longing 

To the blossom on the spray. 
And the dew upon the blossom. 

In the dawn of Yesterday. 



112 



A LETTER TO A GHOST 

Walter, do you remember yet, 
Across the clanging barriers. 
Fast growing wider, of five years, 

The April morning when we met? 

You may, but I shall not forget. 

April, the name is melody; 

The Spirit of the Spring that weaves 
White blossoms in amidst green leaves, 
And flings them to the bird and bee, 
From daisied turf and orchard tree. 

But now with angry step she came, 
Her feet ascending up the path 
Of hatred, to the heights of wrath, 

Wherefrom the Tithes of God to claim 

In an apocalypse of flame. 

I was — n'importe — you were seventeen, 
A fair, slim stripling in his May; 
How might I match my brown and gray 

With your young springtime's gold and green? 

God and all time rose up between. 

You knew — or did you know? — how fond 
I was of your fresh morning dew. 
And all the boyish flame of you. 



113 



For me, my friendship never wanned ; 
Though you have surely grown beyond. 

How should you know? I never told 
My thoughts, but laid them by to stir 
My soul with scents of lavender, 
With legends from a page of gold, 
To warm my heart by, when I'm old. 

We shall not see their like again. 
Those passionate, heroic days. 
At which the world stood still to gaze; 
Ah me ! In those days men were men, 
And brothers to each other then. 

And heaven high they piled their vows 
To see Our Mother stand again 
Grown fairer in the sight of men. 
With Her old crown upon Her brows 
In Her new builded Golden House. 

And I, I felt my pulses stir 
— Though exiled from her side I stood- 
With Her imperious claim of Blood; 
And brought the body's sweat to Her 
As gold and frankincense and myrrh. 

Our Sacred Mother, from whose brow 
Her crowns were fallen in the dust; 
Dethroned, unsceptred and — August, 



114 



Thrice more august and dearer now 
Than sceptred, robed and crowned, I vow. 

Ah, Walter, you had laughed to know 
How I, who toiled among the brick. 
Slave to the genii of the pick. 
Rose up on Spirit Heights, to throw 
My soul's vast pity o'er Her woe. 

How I in all that vast profound 
Of ruin, felt the All divine 
Approach me in the Human Shrine, 
Where I, adoring, knelt and bound 
My Love Her bleeding wounds around. 

Yet had I pride, that none had dared 
Save she, to tread such deeps of woe; 
Or light so red a torches' glow ; 
So high its sullen splendour flared 
The Gods upon Olympus stared. 

And that apo-calypse of dole. 

That sorrow sown across the land 
By some Divine and Wanton hand. 
Was the strong fortress and the goal 
To which I strove to lift my soul. 

Ah, Memory is Sorrow's crown, 

Wherefrom, amidst the thorns arise 
The Jewels of Remembered Eyes ; 



115 



And blue eyes call to me, or brown, 
From all the widely ruined town. 

From all Her avenues that led 

From nowhere, through all gaunt distress. 
To waste and empty nothingness, 
Ghosts of the quick and of the dead 
Gather at midnight round my bed. 

And, Walter, since a ghost you are, 
— Nay, laugh not; join me in the toast, 
"A health to my remembered ghost," — 
I seek your ghostly light from far, 
As the Night cries out to the Star. 

And so I weave for you this net, 

Whose fragile threads are wet and stained 
From the gold chalice, ceaseless drained. 

Of the heart's blood and the soul's sweat. 

On the black altars of Regret. 

And now I come to seek you far, 
Who know me not, nor seek to know ; 
I, also ghost of long ago. 

Cry: "God be with you where you are; . 

Adieu. Or is it au revoir?" 



116 



THE TOUCH OF THE HUMAN 

APRIL^ 1906. 

In the days when the Gods came near to men, 
And the souls of men were wanned and thinned, 

As a Great Voice rose and fell again 
In sullen thunder above the wind; 

Then our souls crouched down in the dust to hear 
And to shrink away from them as they came; 

And their visible presence swept so near 

That we shrank and shriveled within the flame. 

And we lay supine, and with shattered will, 

While they came and Spoke, and went rough shod 

O'er the frightened earth, that shivered still 
At the awful imminence of the God. 

And they passed; and we rose again and crept 

To stare in a stupid wonderment 
At the wonderful ruins, tempest swept. 

In the visible footsteps where they went. 

Then we rose again, to our feet, and Stood ; 

And Man had come to his own again; 
We were heirs of an old historic blood. 

Sons of our Mother, masterful men. 

And we raised the glove that the Fates threw down. 
With an angry smile and stuck it, mayhap, 

117 



In a last year's hat with tattered crown, 
Or beside our pipe, in a ragged cap. 

And we swore a great oath to set the base 

Of a greater future upon our past, 
And Our Mother's House in its ancient place, 

In despite of the Fates — while time should last. 

And we went like brothers, and sought our place, 
Gentle and simple, churl and clown, 

Lofty and noble, mean and base. 

In the broken halls of the bankrupt town. 

And I came as became me to come ; withal 
I wrote my name in a cynic mood. 

In a cynically loyal scrawl 
In the League of Human Brotherhood. 

And I stood for a moment glad, but dazed, 
At the sudden thrill of the Human Touch, 

To the soul that fed on itself and gazed 
In an introspection overmuch. 

They were gallant days when the shining steel, 
Spade and hatchet, shovel and pick, 

Flashed in the cause of the Commonweal, 
Round twisted girder and broken brick. 

Steel that flashed as in battle's van ; 
Dust that rose as a battle cloud; 



118 



While the Crowned and Bleeding Heart of Man 
Flashed from our flags a defiance proud. 

And the gates of Honour were closed to none ; 

But each might walk with his bosom starred 
With the Order of Service himself had won, 

And the Cross of Merit, a God's award. 

And we, who were heirs of the ancient blood, 
And Sons of Our Mother, felt the stir 

Of her pulses throbbed to our hearts, and stood 
Less for ourselves, and more for Her. 

And as for myself, I vow I served 

In a half adoring thankfulness ; 
And held as an honour not all deserved, 

The right to succor Her in distress. 

They were gracious days ; and they touch today 
With a gracious hand; and the ghosts are thick 

That smiled and spoke me, and went their way, 
As I toiled in the ruins with spade and pick. 

And I thank the Gods for the saving grace 
Of the Human Touch, that I knew ye all, 

And that Sorrow linked our names for a space. 
On a tear-stained page, in a blood-red scrawl. 

Fair ghost of the boy with golden hair, 
Sad ghost of the man with hair of gray, 



119 



I am but ghost, and but ghosts ye are, 
Blown out on the winds of Yesterday. 

Let us tarry a moment before we go. 
Dissonant ghosts, to clutch and hold 

In the turbulent age's ebb and flow 

Our phantom measures of fame or gold. 

Tarry a little, and hear me vow 

By the dearest oath that my soul may swear, 
By the higher light on my wider brow. 

And the leaf of Laurel that is not there, 

I would serve again for the Commonweal, 
In the ranks of the men grown Titan tall, 

Shoulder to shoulder against the wheel. 
And All for One, and One for All. 

I am vowed to the marble breast of Art; 

The banns are spoke that I can not stay; 
And my soul consents, but I found my heart 

In that liaison of an April day. 

And my soul may thrive; but my heart is loath 
For the grip of flesh in the halls that rang, 

To the man's deep drum roll of Saxon oath, 
And the silver bugle of boyish slang. 

Let us begone, for Our Mother calls 

From Her higher heights, and we may not stay 

In the beautiful, broken, ruined halls, 
And the golden glamour of Yesterday. 

120 



THE SILENT HOUSE 

Knock ! Knock ! The door is barred. 
Ye are true in watch and ward 
Bolt and bar and lock, so witness these, my fingers, bruised 
and scarred. 

Yet I know they would not feel 
Though they beat on triple steel. 
While I wrench the dreadful secret from its black and 
broken seal. 

Oh, the dark, forbidding house 

Frowns from black and angry brows, 
Like a violated temple, brooding o'er its broken vows. 

Surely, Something, silent shod, 

In the middle night hath trod 
In the inner holies, riving at the handiwork of God. 

Speak ! Speak ! He will not speak 

Though I cry out with a shriek; 
Though the coward blood runs backward from the pallor 
of my cheek; 

Though I cry out "It is I !" 

Comes no answer to my cry 
Save an echo, beaten backward from the adamantine sky. 

Bring the axe and bring the bar; 
Let us throw the door ajar 
On the guilty Something, hiding where the trembling 
shadows are; 

121 



Something rending with its claw; 
Dripping ravin from its jaw; 
Springing up to tear asunder, crouching down again to 
gnaw. 

Nay, what ecstasy of fear. 

Nothing ! There is nothing here 
But the empty casket, rifled of the gem I held most dear. 

He hath gone, and gone with him 

Something vast and Something dim, 
Something filling all the heavens to the far horizon's rim. 

Not as wild beasts tear their prey 
Death divorces soul from clay, 
But he bears it on white wings above a flawed and futile 
day. 

Let us leave him with his light 
Bleakly, mystically white. 
Let us wrap the shadows round us and go forth into the 
night. 



122 



THE BROTHERS 

I am My Lord of Life, 
I sit in the crowded ways, 

My feet are red with the strife 
Of the myriad yesterdays. 

I sit in the market place 

Where souls are bought and sold. 
With a smile on my false face 

At the thirty pieces told. 

And whenever the stakes run high 

Forever my skill avails 
To throw with the loaded die, 

And juggle the lying scales. 

But they fawn about my feet ; 

They bend the supple knee ; 
With loyal love they greet 

My rags of royalty. 

Till, at closing of the day. 

Broken, bankrupt and banned. 

They pass from me away 
And seek my brother's land. 

I am My Lord of Death, 
I sit from the throng apart, 

Li my palace of Hushed Breath, 
In the land of Quiet Heart. 

123 



And my palace walls frown black 
When the evening light hath gone; 

But they flush and answer back 
The light of Another Dawn. 

With my brother, Life, I keep 
A tarnished truce of fate. 

But my fair twin brother. Sleep, 
Is the keeper of my gate. 

His face is fair to see; 

His feet are shod with wool; 
And he holds the golden key 

Of my Palace Beautiful. 

I am My Lord of Death, 

I am My Lord of Peace, 
In my palace of Hushed Breath, 

In the valleys of Heartsease. 



124 



TO JOAQUIN MILLER 

To thee upon a purple height, 

Lit by an evening star, 
I, dweller in the halls of night, 

And v/here the shadows are. 
Lifted my brows unto the light, 

And sought thee from afar. 

And I rejoice, that in my days 
One Day hath blossoms more; 

Serenely o'er the crowded ways 
Of all my days before; 

As a white lily in its grace, 
To kneel to and adore. 

From an unbounding unsuccess. 

From him who nothing hath. 
From the sad captive in duress 

And circled round with wrath, 
How shall he, from his littleness, 

Fling gifts upon thy path ? 

That thou, perchance, from gracious heart. 

With kindly hand shall raise 
The scentless, pale, wild flower of Art, 

That blooms upon thy ways, 
And half contemptuous set apart 

From thy full crown of bays. 



125 



THE WAR SHIPS OF THE SKIES 

In the vast spaces of yon blue profound, 
Yon silent sea, yon world without a sound, 
Comes now a voice to waken — and to wound. 

Alas, alas, shall yonder stainless blue 
Wrapped in red flames, distill a crimson dew, 
Staining, defiling, dripping, ghastly through, 

On the child's forehead, on the sad-browed Christ 

In yonder shrine. Whose Passion unsufficed 

To staunch the blood, whereat His Blood is priced. 

Shall twenty ages of the Pririce of Peace 

Not still the war drums, bid the trumpets cease. 

Drive man's red rapine from His upper seas? 

And Man ! Shall Nature's first and final cause 
The polished purport of Her savage laws, 
Shoot forth red talons with his wild beast claws; 

Quarter his shadow on this shield of light. 

Set up his finite with the infinite, 

His war tents in these Halls of Day and Night? 



126 



GLOWING EMBERS 

Oh, boy's thin features, cold and white, 

I knew you warmly human ; 
Whence comes that superhuman light 

To any born of woman? 
The King hath loved him ; by that grace, 

Kinglike, he doth inherit 
Majestically in this place 

The Kingdom of the Spirit. 

The doors are shut ; the shutters drawn ; 

Nor coming now, nor going; 
The King hath set His seals upon 

The house of His bestowing. 
Its master gone, the King's writ strips 

The dark, deserted dwelling. 
Oh, boy, beneath those close shut lips 

What secrets worth the telling ! 

But yesterday, a careless boy 

He took his boyish inning 
At the old game — with pagan joy — 

Of living and of sinning. 
Dawn set her jeweled steps of light 

A pathway to his going; 
The inner chambers of the night 

Held secrets for his knowing. 

Do they whose footsteps with him fared 
His springtime paths of pleasure, 

127 



Who from his cup of summer shared 

The boy's unstinted measure, 
Who sinned with him his boyish sin, 

Who halved his boyish folly. 
Kneel at the august shrine, wherein 

His broken toys grow holy? 

I call the name I loved, in vain; 

Nor answer nor replying; 
Only the winter wind and rain 

Antiphonally crying. 
Bertie, to yonder heights of death 

That boyish name endearing ! 
I falter it beneath my breath. 

And tremble in the hearing. 

Ah, dear, for thou wert passing dear ; 

Perchance for this the dearer 
That one short moment set thee near, 

One white-winged instant, nearer. 
Still, flawed with folly as we are, 

The jewel of our choosing 
Shines ever brighter from afar. 

And dearer for the losing. 

Ah, Friend, whose boyish footsteps stray 

Past sunrise and' sunsetting, 
No dawn shall light the eastern way 

To day of my forgetting. 
A light illumes my pathway yet 



128 



From those old glowing embers. 
And thou above wilt not forget 
Him who on earth remembers. 

Kneels Memory in her holy shrine, 

Where purple, rose and golden. 
Through windows of the spirit shine 

Old joys — lost or withholden. 
Here, kneeling in a secret place. 

She veils her face and falters. 
Seeing thy once familiar face 

At her familiar altars. 



129 



THE LEPER 

Nay, come not near me. I am he 

Who bruised and bleeding from her rods, 

Whom mortals call Necessity, 
Burned incense to the alien gods. 

I set the fool's cap on my head ; 

I bent the knee where Momus rules ; 
I kissed the hand I scorned ; and led 

The courtiers, in his court of fools. 

The silver bells rang high and shrill 
Above the gibing and the jeers. 

I pledged my soul to drink my fill. 
Myself the maddest of my peers. 

It was a pleasant jest; but now 
'Tis fire of hell. No god averts 

The ominous circle from my brow. 

Whereon it clings and stains and hurts. 



^t3' 



Nay, touch me not, and come not nigh. 

Stand not my sin and me between. 
Let my soul cleanse it with its cry, 

The leper's cry, "Unclean ! Unclean 



130 



MY LITTLE GHOST 

Little Ghost, whose footsteps fleet 
Passed me in the crowded street 
Where the torrents of the people in the frowning canons 
meet ; 

Little Ghost of flame and dew, 
Now I keep my tryst with you, 
And the morrow after Death, my soul shall pledge you 
faith anew. 

Little Ghost of mine, your glance 
Pierced my bosom like a lance 
Couched for God and Love and Honour, in the old days of 
Romance. 

Nor affirming, nor denying. 
Neither question nor replying ; 
For we passed like ships in ocean, with no signal flags 
a-flying. 

But I saw your hair was spun 

In the chambers of the Sun, 
By the happy Hours awaiting till his shining race was won. 

Soft as silken eider-down. 

Hair of gold, or hair of brown, 
This I know not; but I know you w'ore it like a monarch's 
crowai. 

Bluest blue, or grayest gray. 
Eyes of thine I may not say; 



131 



But I know they led the Morning, and it blossomed into 
Day. 

And the captive day was drawn 
By their light from budding dawn 
On diviner heights, till night assumed her crown of stars 
thereon. 

Vanish, little Ghost of Gladness, 
Vision of a Poet's madness; 
Foam and sparkle of Delight upon my purple wine of sad- 
ness; 

Lest my long, black shadow grown 
Longer, blacker, shall be thrown 
On the path before your footsteps, and be added to your 
own. 



132 



GOD'S HILL AT BELMONT 

West of Belmont on a lonely hill are a few crumbling stones, 
bearing the date of the early 'fifties. The jungle has swept over 
them, and if remembered of God, they are quite forgotten of man. 

Where the torrent of the hills 
Pours its emerald flood, and spills 
Overtopping waves of verdure, to the green waves of the 
sea, 

They have laid them down to rest. 
With the green turf o'er their breast. 
They have reached through time, and taken seizin of 
Eternity. 

They are dust, who once were men; 

Earth has claimed her own again; 
'Tis the final law of nature, once they were and now are 
not. 

Creeps o'er them the chaparral. 

Over them the dead leaves fall, 
Man forsaken, man forgotten, in this all-forgotten spot. 

Never footstep of the dawn 

Enters here, to tread upon 
The encircling shadows, guarding the enchanted solitude. 

Hesitant, and half afraid. 

Lingers noon, without the shade. 
And the flying night flies faster, o'er the black and haunted 
wood. 

133 



When the mask of night is drawn 

From the face of the last dawn, 
When before the last great moment, heaven and earth are 
hushed and still, 

When the final trumpet thrills 

To the stout heart of the hills, 
Will the lonely dead awaken, on this lost and lonely hill? 



SONNET 

Bring us nor roses white, nor roses red 

To crown the brows of love, for on them be 
The garden's sweat, the blood of Calvary. 

And we, alas ! whose erring feet mislead 

To new and stranger faiths, no longer tread 
The once familiar paths of Arcady. 
Mayhaps, our souls have gained Eternity, 

But all the sweeter ways of life are dead. 

Ah, sweeter these, than rose of mortal knowing. 
Beside the enchanted waters flowing deep 

Into the unknown land, the poppies blowing. 

Red, sullen torches of oblivion glowing. 

But our sad gods their one last guerdon keep, 
Their scarlet poppies of eternal sleep. 



134 



THE HILLS OF OCEAN VIEW 

Spring is regnant in the valleys; Spring is throned upon 
the mountains ; 
She hath sent her royal summons forth ; her vassal 
lands are fain 
To attend their Sovereign Lady in the place of pleasant 
fountains 
That have spilled themselves before her in a shower of 
golden rain. 

She hath summoned with her magic wand her chosen 
maids of honour ; 
They have set their jeweled footprints o'er the threshold 
of the dawn ; 
They robe her in her purple gown, they serve and wait 
upon her; 
They tire and dress her royal head and set her crown 
thereon. 

I am captive to the city streets, but still my heart goes 
straying; 
She hath touched me with her sceptre, and the broken 
fetters fall ; 
Go forth, my heart, and guide my feet and we will go 
a-Maying, 
For Spring hath thrown her gentle chains about a 
willing thrall. 

Let us leave the stony highways and the tangle of the 
alleys, 

135 



The false and fleeting mirage of the street and avenue, 
Let us seek the shaded canyons and the flower-enameled 

valleys, 
And the hills I knew in boyhood rising over Ocean 

View. 

Oh, my heart, from gloomy dungeons let us sally to 
recapture 
The elusive Something vanished, where the scent of 
lilac brings 
In a sudden flash of memory the evanescent rapture, 
And the more enduring heart-break of a score of 
buried springs. 

We will wander o'er the meadows with a flame of poppies 
glowing 
— Stirring bugle blasts of color — where the Sun God's 
coursers stood; 
We will kneel in woodland temples, where the pallid 
blossoms blowing 
Guard the chaste untaken altars, Vestal Virgins of the 
wood. • 

We will seek in rugged canyons rising upwards from the 
valleys, 
Like a Titan's heaven-flung stairway with its higher 
steps untrod, 
For the trillium's vase of ivory, like a sacrificial chalice, 
With its triune leaves to bring to mind the Trinity of 
God. 



136 



Oh, My Hills of God behind me, ever purple in the dis- 
tance, 
Drenched with flying ocean vapors, beaten by the bitter 
wind, 
The feet of flesh forsake ye, but the soul with high 
insistence 
Hath burst her prison cells of clay and lingers on 
behind. 

I have sought and found the jewel of the Poet's crowned 
passion 
In the Labyrinths of God, whereof my fingers hold the 
clew, 
But I drop the Shining Spirit Thread to kneel in adoration 
To the ghosts of my dead springtimes on the Hills of 
Ocean View. 



137 



DEAD JOY 

Fair as the Prince of Troy, 

Hidden away 
Lieth what is of Joy 

Fairest of clay. 
Though we cry out to the boy 

Naught will he say. 

Now that he lieth there 

Patient and meek, 
Smoothing his shining hair 

Kissing his cheek. 
Speak ! In your wild despair 

Bid him to speak ! 

Nay, he will answer not 

Nor yea nor nay. 
He was but earth begot; 

Now he is clay. 
Come from the haunted spot, 

Hasten away. 



138 



TO SING LEE 

AT MILLBRAE,, APRIL 18, 1906, 

We were East born and West born, and alien in color, in 

creed and in birth, 
But the East and the West flung together, clasped hands 

in the trembling of earth. 
What struggles of Titans imprisoned in nethermost deeps 

of the prime. 
And matching their Ossas and Pelions 'gainst the sun- 
circled ramparts of Time; 
What memories stirred in her bosom, what passionate 

pangs of unrest, 
What taint in her blood from of olden, thus curdled the 

milk in her breast, 
That she turned in her maniac fury, her love of aforetime 

forsworn. 
With her features contorted and trembling in hate of the 

sons she had borne. 
For flung from the All Mother's bosom, swept out by the 

flame of her wrath. 
We fled from her presence, and stumbled in the pits that 

she digged in our path. 
And the house strained hard at its moorings, and battered 

and wracked out of form, 
Caught up in the whirlwind of Cosmos, heaved high like 

a ship in a storm. 
A moment, a cycle, an aeon, we strove in abysses of death. 
In the quicksands that swallowed our footsteps, the whirl- 
pool that dragged us beneath. 

139 



Till clasped by the hand of Existence, though bleeding 

and struck to the floor, 
We gathered Our Own from her wreckage, and fought out 

a way to the door. 
To the dew on the face of the blossom, to sun upon blos- 
som and thorn. 
To breezes from Orient hill-tops that blew through the 

gateways of morn, 
To the promise of God in the sky, that circled the blue 

without end. 
And wrapped us about from His Wrath, as we looked in 

the face of a Friend. 
Sprung from the Esau of nations, the first born and last in 

the race. 
In the adamant Arch of Degree he was set as a stone at 

the base. 
And doomed by the souls of his fathers to serve with his 

soul in the mire 
For the husks and the lees of Possession, doled down from 

the heights of Desire. 
So he stood in the April morning, unlovely in face and in 

frame ; 
But Pity had touched the gaunt features and Mercy shone 

out as a flame. 
For the mask of the Orient fell from his face, in the shock 

that released 
His Soul to shine forth for a moment from inscrutable 

eyes of the East. 
And it answered the Soul of the West, and united in Kin- 
ship they ran 

140 



From the anger of God in the heavens, to clutch at the 

Human in Man. 
So he stood in our doorway unclaiming the kinship of 

Blood and of Birth, 
And the aid that he tendered a neighbor had come from 

the ends of the earth. 



THE CALIFORNIA POPPY 

With large and liberal largesse behold. 

The gilded guerdon of a thousand rains. 

The hills grow rich, and opulent the plains. 
The fond, sweet miracle that Eden told, 
To Universal Mother Earth of old, 

A mellow melody of minor strains, 

That runs with Springtime madness in her veins, 
And blossoms from her breast in fairy gold. 
Still the old miracle, forever new 

With each new spring the golden cups are set. 
To hold their brimming fill of morning dew, 

And speak to man of God, lest he forget 
The lights of Eden, and the tree that grew 

Within the walls, where the four rivers met. 



141 



IN NOVEMBER 

Oh, Roses, Red Roses, the winds are a-wailing; 
In the halls of November the year is a-f ailing; 
The summer is dead and the autumn lies ailing. 

Ye came with the spring, when her fingers were spinning 
The green robes of May; now the leaves are a-thinning. 
Why woo ye the winter? Why wait on his winning? 

Oh, Bride of the Summer, list not to his suing. 
Turn not your red lips to his white-lipped undoing. 
'Tis death, not a bridal ; a rape, not a wooing. 

The lost and the lovely who loved ye, are sleeping. 
The dead leaves in torrents above them are sweeping. 
Go doff your red robes, and go down to them weeping. 



]^2 



THE KING IN DARIEN 

Man hath clothed him with the lightning, he hath shod 
his feet with thunder; 
Past the dream of Priest or Poet still his steadfast steps 
outran ; 
And he stands upon the mountains and the heights are 
trodden under 
In a shining Way of Triumph, for the Royalty of Man. 

He hath clipped the heavens with his wings, and in his 
winged leaping 
Drags a tributary ocean in a leash of either hand; 
Till he loose them from their tether with resistless current 
sweeping, 
But with measured, man-made impulse o'er the subju- 
gated land. 

Past the purple tropic headlands, between jeweled tropic 
islands, 
From the lands beyond the dawn, the lands behind the 
night, they come; 
And the tropic jungles echo upward to the tropic high- 
lands. 
With the thrilling of the bugle and the throbbing of the 
drum. 

They will enter in the gateway like a splendid vision, 
weaving 
On a field of stainless blue their changing, iridescent 
gleams ; 

143 



In a Poet's Dream of Beauty never went such fair de- 
ceiving 
From the shining loom of Fancy, through the Ivory 
Gate of Dreams. 

When the nations' navies enter, with their silken banners 

streaming, 

One, the blue-eyed English boy, shall enter first, and go 

before 

In his Poet Bucentaur and bear the golden circle gleaming, 

For the bridal of the waters, as the warrior princes bore. 

As the scattered stars of heaven and the clustered con- 
stellations 
Wan and wither, pale and vanish, at the coming of the 
sun. 
He shall shine serenely o'er ye ; in your pathway for the 
nations. 
Ye have cleft the hills asunder, in a Royal Road for 
One. 

For we tell you, we, who Know, to ye, perchance, that 
shall not know it, 
That the Master of the spot hath entered here from 
lands afar; 
Hath aforetime scrawled above ye the Crowned Rubric 
of the Poet, 
— Taken seizin of his Kingdom — and hath sealed it with 
a star. 



144 



In his Elder Right of Royalty, he enters to inherit, 

Crowned beyond the grosser vision of the purblind eyes 
of men. 
O'er your tributary earthly realms, the Kingdom of the 
Spirit, 
Reigning as a Poet King, "Upon a Peak in Darien." 



TO THE NEMOPHILA . 

""baby blue eyes""" 

What bird across the walls of Eden flew 
Above thee in the alien land, and threw 
O'er thee his shadow of celestial blue? 

Or else from bluer skies than ours, was drawn 
— From azure meadows, where the feet of Dawn 
Walked golden shod in the dim ages gone — 

The evanescent azure of thine eyes. 
That man might dream a fairer paradise, 
With all thy blue reflected in its skies. 



145 



THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS 

Why, Mono and Inyo ! The news has surprised me ! 

You are blood of my blood, you are flesh of my flesh. 
Yet your message has come, and its words have apprised 
me 

That two of my daughters have turned out "Secesh." 
I have loved you sincerely, although you're not comely 

Like dear Santa Clara, the flower of you all. 
But my dwelling is large, there's a home for the homely. 

With bed in the chamber and board in the hall. 

Think not that the fires of your mother's affection 

Are quenched by the flaws of your face or your frame. 
For your angular features and sallow complexion 

Believe me, my dears, cut no ice in its flame. 
If my daughters are many, my bosom is ample, 

And in it for each of you, mother love thrills. 
With a strength that avails to its need, for example 

It crosses wide deserts and overtops hills. 

Stuff and nonsense ! Let's hear no more talk of eloping 

With the silver mine owner from over the way. 
A truce to your folly ! An end to your hoping ! 

Return to your duty, untrounced, while you may. 
And, besides, I am really quite sure that you miscount 

His fortune, for know, silly girls that you are. 
The Silver he brags of is largely at discount. 

And Mr. Nevada, himself, below par. 



146 



Your friend, whom I. also know well, Mrs. Austin, 

Who loves yoii quite dearly, and well knows your needs, 
I've not heard from her yet, but I'm sure she's quite lost in 

Amazement, to hear of your frolicsome deeds. 
And now, my dear girls, no vexatious beseeching, 

Return to your mother who loves you, and know 
Let you reach where you will, yet my will is o'er reaching. 

No go, naughty daughters ! No go, you can't go ! 



THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER 

Kind Lord, a boon we crave, 

To Thee an easy task. 
It is not much we have, 

Nor is it much we ask. 

Grant us some pleasant spot 
(So may we hope to thrive) 

Where that which is, is not. 
And two and two make five. 

This will suffice our need. 
Nor do we ask for more. 

We never can succeed 

Where two and two make four. 

147 



ELECTRA 

Alas, alas, Electra! Grown less fair; 

With thy disheveled hair. 

Ghastly and livid white, 

Writhing in tangled agonies of light 

Upon the startled bosom of the night. 

Thou, of the Sisters Seven 

Who shone the fairest in the halls of heaven. 

To thee what bitter memories remain 

Of the old Dardan plain; 

Of thy ecstatic joy, 

Thy amorous dalliance with the princely boy 

Within the walls of heaven builded Troy. 

Thou, exiled from thy place, 

Amidst the awful heights and depths of space. 

Whence comest thou to vex our sight, and why? 

From what remoter sky 

Immeasurably far 

Beyond the circle of the Sun God's car. 

Beyond the light of alien sun and star, 

Comest thou to us again 

Presaging evil to the sons of men. 

The fall of empires, and the death of kings 

Ever thy presence brings. 

From thy remotest yore. 

Now, NOW, what bringest thou from that dim shore 

To crown thy evil most, with yet a more. 

Perchance, the cosmic fire 

To loose the burden of thy Titan sire. 



THE BRIDAL 

Fill up his cup each guest 

Let it brim over. 
Ready both bride and feast. 

Tarries the lover. 
Why is my lord so late? 

Why does he tarry? 
Here in my halls I wait 

Whom he would marry. 
Long, life and I were wed, 

Long have I proved him, 
Shared with him board and bed. 

Never I loved him. 
Life is a sorry jest 

All the world over. 
He I wed now is best, 

Faithfulest lover. 
Hasten, my lord, I pray. 

Hasten yet faster. 
This is our wedding day. 

Lord, Friend and Master. 
Narrow the bridal bed; 

Satin its pillows; 
Satin all white its spread; 

White lace in billows. 
Comes my lord's tiring maid 

Softly a-creeping. 
Soft are her fingers laid 

On the bride sleeping. 

149 



Up from the bed and flee !' 

The rite's unnerving. 
Let mortal eyes not see 

His servant's serving. 
Up ! away from the shock 

Ghastly, inhuman. 
Lest, maddened, we mock 

Christ, born of woman. 
Still bride of a day. 

Soft lie your cover. 
My Lord Death, away ! 

The bridal is over. 



150 



THE CHOICE 

To me came Phoebus, ere the night was drawn 
From purple pomps and pageantries, upon 
The car that leads the triumph of the dawn. 

Yea, all the purple chambers of the night 
Blossomed as silver lilies. In my sight 
The dark conceived, and bore a Star of light. 

The radiant robes of his divinity 

Enveloped and effaced me; unto me 

He spoke, and said: 'T give a gift to thee. 

No perfect gift I give, but thou shalt lift 
Thy soul above, and see through flaw and rift 
The giver's soul enshrined within the gift." 

Of old in Hellas and in Rome adored 

The Sun God spoke, and at my feet were poured 

His treasures in his ancient chambers stored ; 

Torrents of gems, from which myself might choose. 
Dulling the rainbow with their myriad hues; 
Mine, one to take, and many to refuse. 

And last, might overleap a god's desire, 
A single string from his immortal" lyre, 
Throbbing and trembling with unearthly fire. 



151 



My soul flashed up to that exalted hour. 
I, mortal, chose of all his Golden Shower 
A God's apocalypse of pain and power. 

"Lord, cast Thy shadow o'er my shadowed ways; 
Nor peace I ask, nor joy, nor length of days; 
Give me the Gift wherewith to sound Thy Praise." 



SONNET 

TO THE DEAR PEOPLE. 

Good Friends, Sweet Voices, if indeed ye be 

Sweet voices, or good friends, I pray ye hear. 

Lend me the large circumference of your ear. 
Though I approach your regnant sovereignty 
With head erect, and with unbended knee. 

Doubt not that your endearing charms are dear 

To me; for what but love should bring me near? 
Pray ye, believe me of your charity. 

How much I love ye, do ye seek to know. 
To the full height of your most high desire. 

(How high is that, if your desires be low?) 
Sooner my heart, than love for ye shall tire. 

('Tis tired now, is but my love so so.) 
So help me Hermes ! God and Thief and Liar. 



152 



"MYSELF AM HELL" 

I said, "From deeper deeps, my plaint 

Cries to an empty shrine. 
So I to ease my grief will paint 

A deeper grief than mine." 

I might not find a grief more deep 

On earth ; so it befell 
I, mortal, sought the forlorn steep 

Whence souls go down to hell. 

The gates which swing not back again 

I freely entered in. 
For, lo ! the countersign was Pain ; 

The key thereof was Sin. 

The wrath of God, in wanton strength, 

O'er all the murky skies. 
Outstretched eternity in length 

Ere yet hell knew sunrise. 

I saw the seas of fire that seethe 
With waves of flame, that tossed 

From white hot molten deeps beneath 
The spirits of the lost. 

And one, from out that weltering storm, 
Who came my steps to meet; 

Flame dripped like water from his form. 
And ran about his feet. 



153 



He placed his fingers on my brow; 

They scorched me to the bone. 
Oh, Hell's Red Dripping Crown ! I vow 

Those fingers were my own. 

I, that sad ghost of fiery seas, 
In whom mine eyes might trace 

Myself, in all the agonies 
Of that distorted face. 

Mine, mine, the God imploring eyes ; 

Mine, cracked and bleeding lips; 
Mine, hands that tore at empty skies 

With flaming finger tips. 

Oh, Christ, the Pitiful ! But then 

Some ray of morning broke 
From my remembered skies again ; 

It touched me, and I woke. 

Yet still, when dawn proclaimed her rule, 

Livid upon my face 
That Mark, not all the winds can cool. 

Nor all the seas erase. 

Still on my brow that monstrous birth 

Begot of Pain and Sin. 
A dream? Why, so, perchance, the earth, 

The heavens, and all therein. 



154 



WHOLESALE ONLY 

Three Ancient Ladies, with a stock complete, 

Have flung their sign out in a modern street; 

The which, "All orders filled in time to catch 

The Lozver Roads, with neatness and dispatch." 

Their windows blossom with a long array 

Of toys to please a sunlit holiday; 

With shining folds of silver paper bound, 

With golden tinsel and red ribbon wound ; 

In homeopathic portions made to spill 

The smaller purses in their gaping till; 

All duly labeled; "Joy" and "Love" and "Peace," 

"Honour" and "Wealth" and "Leisure" and "Heartsease." 

"Open for business !" But so grim and gaunt 

I shrank to proffer them my retail want. 

Obsequious, I sought her listening ear 

The least severest of the all severe. 

"Though lean my purse, God wot, no woman L 

The man who comes to price, remains to buy. 

Joy comes too high, but give me, if you please, 

An ounce of Leisure, and some small Heartsease. 

On that high shelf, the smallest of the lot. 

Tied with red ribbon in a shining knot." 

Thus I to her. A smile a moment's space 

Crackled the ancient parchment of her face. 

And surely. No ! But surely. Yes ! I think. 

Just the remote suggestion of a wink 

Half lit the brooding shadows of her eye 

Like a red flash across an angry sky. 



155 



She clapped her hands; the shop boy came in haste; 

"Life/' mortals call him. I, with grim distaste 

And black disfavor, met the smirking smile 

With which he oiled his creaking tones the while. 

He marshaled forth his words in flying ranks 

"Regrets" tripped up the nimble heel of "Thanks." 

His "Thanks" light fingered, spread deceiving nets 

To tangle the lame feet of his "Regrets." 

These marked down bargains, temptingly displayed, 

Were naught but the "blank cartridges of trade" ; 

A shining emptiness, to catch the eye 

Of the chance bargain hunter, passing by. 

"Sold out of gauds like these, we show with pride 

Our Wholesale Warehouse on the other side. 

These puncheons hold our Black Wine of Despair, 

An ancient vintage. Read the trade-mark there 

Scorched with a Flaming Sword: 'Adam and Son, 

The Eden Vineyards, Anno Mundi One.' 

For this black cloth we have a great demand 

A staple 'tis in every age and land. 

Our Grief A No. 1, our special pride. 

Is warranted all wool and a yard wide. 

And this is our perennial brand of Soap, 

For Bubble Blowing none compares with Hope. 

Our stock is large, the favorite of our toys. 

Beloved by all the larger girls and boys." 

His long, lean finger pointing here and there. 

With eager gestures stabbed the wounded air. 

And he so wheedled me and hypnotized, 

I pawned my soul to him I most despised. 



156 



In short, the rogue so cozened me, I bought 
The things I wanted least, and least had sought, 
A plague on him and all his wares ! I vow 
I hold no further commerce with him now. 



SONNET 

TO LIFE. 

What God so cursed me that I took to wife 
— For surely some mad Boy God aimed the jest 
That laid the ancient wanton on my breast — 
His cast-ofif concubine, that men call Life? 
Five hath she borne me — Fear, Despair and Strife 
To loot my scanty stores of peace and rest; 
And black-browed Hate and Scorn, to bring as guest 
Pain, and the pang of his red dripping knife. 
One hell-bestowed, and five myself begot; 

Five and their dam, to hang with foul embrace 
And poisoned lips that stain, a scarlet blot 

Or livid blotch on my reluctant face. 
I am hag-ridden up steep heights, God wot. 
And imp-spurred downward, in a devil's race. 

157 



TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN KEATS 

Lost Pleiad of serener skies 

Drawn from thy milder spheres, 

What evil influence bid thee rise 
In our remoter years? 

The radiant light of those proud eyes 

— The echo of the Dawn — 
They should have waked when Grecian skies 

Lit the young Parthenon. 

They should have waked on charmed ground, 

In some enchanted night. 
The light that lit them drifted round 

From some diviner height. 

Those passionate lips should have possessed 

Artemis' haughty mouth; 
And taught to love that virgin breast 

Thirsty of too long drought. 

Thy name, "in water writ," shall live 

While living waters run. 
And while the gates of morning give 

A pathway to the sun. 

Earth claims again her earth-born earth. 

The lesser souls flit by. 
This faded Rose of Life gave birth 

To some new Star on High. 



158 



OUR LADY OF WELCOME 

Where the Earth is swept backward, defeated by the rush 
of the sea on the sands, 

Our Lady of Welcome sits throned on the uttermost verge 
of the lands; 

She cries out aloud to the Nations, and beckons with wel- 
coming hands. 

She has walked in the valley of shadows ; She has stood 

in the tumult of war 
Of the elements, rebel against Her; Her children were 

scattered afar; 
But the Day held a torch to Her travail, and the Night 

lit defeat with a star. 

She has trod down defeat in Her pathway; She has 

entered again to Her Own; 
Her children, re-gathered, establish the far-lying rule of 

Her throne; 
And the winds shout the echoes to heaven of Her trumpets 

of victory blown. 

By the splendour of great deeds accomplished, by the 

pulses of pride in Her breast, 
She has summoned the world to Her Presence; She has 

bidden the East as a guest ; 
And the North and the South are made welcome in the 

halls of the Queen of the West. 

159 



By the sea, led in leash o'er the mountains to serve as 

man's slave between walls, 
By the miracle working of God through the hand of the 

Human, She calls; 
Let the lands rise in haste at Her bidding, and follow 

the sun to Her Halls. 



SONNET 

PRESCRIBED FOR POETS AND INSCRIBED TO EDITORS. 

Of withered platitudes, take "quantum suff," 

On barren plains, by stagnant marshes seen; 

(Beware of Fancies poisoned Evergreen;) 
Of commonplace and cant, throw in enough; 
Ten parts of ''rot" and twenty drachms of "puff.'* 

This mixed, and shaken well in your machine, 

Comes out the "poetry," called "magazine." 
And take it? Heaven forbid! Go sell the stuff. 

Yea, go and sell it; ye shall win thereby 
Your thirty silver pieces. Though to win 

Ye pawn some shreds of honour; though on high 
The frightened Muses fly before your sin; 

Though Phoebus winks a tear from either eye, 
And hides his pain his ancient halls within. 



160 



THE THEFT OF WINTER 

IN CALIFORNIA. 

A lusty boy, not here grown old, 

His shining hair was spun 
Of the fine raveled cloth of gold, 

Gift of our Lord, the Sun. 

But, lo, what madness fills his veins, 

For he hath drunken full 
Of brimming flagons of the rains 

In the House Beautiful. 

And he hath sought the fields where May 

Had lain her down to rest; 
And he hath reft and borne away 

The green robe from her breast. 

Her robe of state ! The impish elf ! 

With gold flowers overlaid, 
Wherein to prank his thievish self 

For his mad masquerade; 

Wherein, through all his sunlit way 

His boyish limbs are swift; 
Wherein he brings the gift of May, 

And shining April's gift. 

A golden deed. A gracious thing. 
A jeweled gift, to draw 



161 



The gilded largesse of the Spring 
From Nature's broken law. 

But, Mother Nature ill bestead 

With impotent surprise, 
Tears the gray tresses of her head 

And rubs her startled eyes. 

The wise old lady ! Let her change 

The course of sun and star 
That the Greek Kalends' hands arrange 

Our winter's calendar. 



162 



THE PHILISTINE 

Aye, tear the ancient titles down ; let nothing more remain 
That caught a gleam of Splendour from the Red and Gold 

of Spain. 
Leave not a rag of old Romance to clothe our souls there- 
with. 
Let Jones Street run its Saxon course, and intersect with 

Smith, 
That of the meeting may be born, to gild the name anew, 
A brand new street for philistines, called Smytheson 

Avenue. 
Why weeps the gentle philistine? Why doth the jingo 

rage 
At glowing ecstasies of light upon our earlier page? 
Spain stamped deep impress on our soil. With iron hand 

she pressed 
Her rubric writ in blood and tears and Splendour on our 

breast. 
Comes now the modern philistine and says it doesn't suit; 
We'll "pluck it from our bosoms though our hearts be at 

the root." 
So, out upon the impious rogue that scouts the Gradgrind 

rule 
Of cabbage for the wise man's pot but roses for the fool. 
Oh, brothers of the Holy League, the Trust is ours, to pull 
About our heads the golden dome of the House Beautiful. 
'Tis ours to clip the Graces' robes to match our wit, and 

bind 
The Sun God's Soul in leaden chains of our Boeotian mind. 



163 



Let Eancy fold her shining wings, and veil her face before 
The sacred soul-compelling law that two and two make 

four. 
Let Beauty hunted from the earth, shine on us from afar, 
Not as the light of hearth and hall, but as an alien star. 
And I, among the least of these, am come to lay my axe 
To Fancy's laurels, grown above the underbrush of Facts. 



SONNET 

"dead, dead^ dead'' 

Light in the Night and on the purple crest 

Of her exceeding and extremest height. 

Night, and he only watching with the Night; 
And One who came and touched him on the breast. 
And whispered, "Peace"; the countersign was "Rest." 

The which he heard, and spoke, with face grown white, 

In the strong stress of that compelling light 
That lit the footsteps of the God confessed. 
Was it not strange? Oh, it was passing strange. 

Was it not sweet? Oh, it was passing sweet. 
Oh, passing strange and sweet that sudden change. 

Life's broken fetters fell from hands and feet 
Fiefed in the far off lands and free to range 

Through the wide spaces of the All Complete. 

164 



THE WHITE ROSE AT BERESFORD 

TO E. W. 

Came up the long, straight avenue 
Our Dread and Sovereign Lord; 

His fingers bore the Hidden Clew 
Beside the Naked Sword. 

How found My Lord of Death the way 

To where the Morning spills 
His waves in rose and saffron spray 

Upon the Beresford hills ? 

For, oh, the skies above were blue; 

The hills about were green; 
And Spring on snowy pinions flew 

The blue and green between. 

He came and lo, his commg cast 

A shadow on the sky; 
And the trees shivered when he passed 

As though a wind went by. 

To one alone he bore the Rose, 
Who took with face grown white. 

And eyes that drew the eyelids close 
On that compelling light. 

The years above his brow decreased; 
The thin lips boyish smiled; 



165 



And the torn Mask of Life released 
The features of a child. 

So, childlike to Her Mighty Heart 
From whence a child he came, 

He rendered back to Her a part 
Of childhood's dew and flame. 

Blow white, oh Perfect Rose of Peace 

He wears upon his breast, 
Through the sweet valleys of Heartsease 

And opened gates of Rest. 



166 



TO LINCOLN 

THE OLD SOUTH 

With unrepentant pride, we laid The Flag away, to stir 
Some holy memories in us, with its scent of lavender. 
And rent, and racked, and robbed by war, with Southern 

pride we cast 
Above our present nakedness, the purple of our Past. 
We shut the temples' clanging gates, ourselves had flung 

apart 
To welcome franchised Peace, we built an altar in our 

heart. 
Peace scorned of devils ! Hell begot, that hell might spit 

upon, 
And spurn with loathing from her gates, to vex the gates 

of dawn. 
We higher held, and loved the more, the soldier with his 

sword. 
Than traders, parting in His name, the raiment of the 

Lord. 
Peace came to us the drab of War; the outraged land 

appealed 
From jugglers in the market-place, to Caesars of the field. 

AND THE NEW 

Peace! Peace! Above the jangling worlds, the years of 

Christ increase 
With twice a thousand silver tongues, they cry to us for 

Peace. 
The sacred blood was sprinkled on the lintel of our door 

167 



That bids the Angel of the Sword to vex the land no more. 
We make our ancient wrongs the steps whereon our souls 

shall climb 
To where his crowned Eternity looks loving down on 

Time. 
Co-equal in our Trinity, our High and Holy Three, 
We set Our Lincoln in a shrine, with Washington and 

Lee. 
And by the Beauty of that Life, the Glory of that Name, 
That born with us, arose with you, that each a share 

might claim. 
And as he hears us overhead ! We pledge you Peace 

again. 
A righteous Peace, a brother's Peace, the Peace of equal 

men. 



168 



THE SEEKERS 

SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 18. 

The grist for the mills of the Gods, that is gathered from 

near and from far, 
With rending and riving of atoms, with clashing of sun 

and of star, 
We clutched it with desperate hands from the Fates and 

the Furies who came 
With the sound of the rending of gates in torrents of 

wind-driven flame. 
Though the earth fled away from our feet in trembling 

and loathing, yet still. 
Our souls from the depths of our need flashed up to the 

heights of our will. 
We wrought in a passionate fury; with hands that were 

bleeding we wrought. 
Though our souls sweat blood in the seeking, we sought, 

and we found what we sought. 
We strained at the stone over-weighty, we wrenched at 

the girder, and still 
Our fingers all torn and defenseless grew mailed in the 

armor of will. 
The pulse of our heart rang alarm at the sound of a sigh 

or a moan; 
We followed a veining of scarlet that trickled o'er mortar 

and stone. 
We drew them from tangles of wreckage, from pits of the 

dark where they lay, 

169 



From nethermost valleys of shadows we carried them into 

the day. 
The old and the young lay together; together the dying 

and dead; 
The white hair was smirched with the earth-stain; the 

gold hair bedabbled with red. 
To one came the King in his wrath, and the dead man 

stared up in affright, 
Struck full in the face with the blow, and buffeted into 

the night. 
To one came the King in his love, and the fingers of 

healing were laid 
On the heart and the brain over-wrought, and he smiled 

in his sleep, unafraid. 
And one clinched his fist in his anger ; and one clasped the 

Cross to her breast; 
And one raised his hand as adjuring; and one was more 

fair than the rest; 
He lay with his face on his arm, in the strong, careless 

grace of the boy, 
Struck out by the Gods in their pastime, and broke in 

their wrath as a toy; 
My soul, to his soul that was passing, by the Name that 

the lips may not speak 
Adjured him with august compelling, that brought the 

faint flush to his cheek; 
And he tarried a space at my bidding on the brink of the 

Great Divide, 
And he looked in my face, and his eyes smiled into my 

eyes, and he died. 

170 



There was never the time for a tear, nor ever the time 

for a sigh, 
But my face grew white in the light of his soul as it 

passed me by. 
And the hand of a God had lingered on the finer clay and 

the soul, 
But we laid him the one, with the many, and a part of the 

broken whole. 
And Fear held the torch to our seeking; we sought in 

morasses of dread 
For the bond of the Human between us, the quick, the 

dying and dead. 
And nearer from ultimate reaches, the wings of the 

tempest were drawn, 
And leading the vanguard of rapine, the Fates and the 

Furies swept on. 



171 



HER BIRTHDAY. APRIL 18 

TO SAN FRANCISCO. 

Bring we to the Most High our palms of praise; 

Comes now the Day of days 

When from the flame and smoke 

Round that proud head, that bent not to the stroke, 

The radiance of the wider morning broke; 

The High and Holy Day 

When Her old earth and heavens passed away. 

From that Medea's Caldron, where she cast 

The all of all Her past. 

The Sacred Mother drew 

In splendour trebled twenty times that grew 

The golden recompense of all things new. 

To sit Her throne again 

Crowned, robed and sceptred in the sight of men. 

Seek through the fields of that titanic war 

Scarce shall ye find a scar, 

Though struggling Titans hurled 

From the dim caverns of the underworld 

Hill upon trembling hill top; and unfurled 

Upon her broken towers 

The flaming flag of the infernal powers. 

Blow the shrill bugle ; let the drum unroll 
Its thunder of the soul. 



172 



Let all our banners wave 

Our thanks to Him Who took away and gave. 

She, who was dead, hath risen from the grave; 

The stone is rolled away; 

Risen, she greets the light of the new day. 



SONNET 

TO THE COLUMBINE. 

Lo, I today have broken holy bread; 

My trembling lips have tasted hallowed wine; 

I, mortal, compassed by the All Divine 
With higher light, in higher ways was led 
To where the awful Sacrament was spread; 

God and I only, in a hidden shrine 

Wherein, like swinging lamps, the columbine 
Lit all the shadows with its flowers of red. 

I, heritor of bud and flower and leaf, 
I, free and fiefed in His enchanted wood, 

Knelt to receive His accolade of Grief; 
Bestowed on purple peaks of Solitude; 

Wherewith the Poet holds from God his fief. 
Whereof God's seal proclaims his title good. 



173 



THE IMPREGNABLE CASTLE 

In yonder frowning walls tonight 
The knights their revels keep. 

Between me and the giddy height, 
The castle moat is deep. 

And who am I, a wandering knight, 
To dare that haughty steep? 

From mine own castle of Romance 

I, disinherited, 
Despoiled of all but sword and lance, 

In alien ways am led, 
Till, of mine own inheritance, 

The times be brought to bed. 

No silken gage of love is bound 

About my sable crest. 
But antique loyalty hath found 

A dwelling in my breast. 
I couch my lance for Gods discrowned, 

And princes dispossessed. 

God wot, my arm is not less strong, 

My lance is not less bright 
Than theirs, the fortune-favored throng. 

That feasts within tonight, 
Where I among my peers belong 

Of mine own knightly right. 



174 



THE THREE AT STANFORD 

Tread ye with reverent feet, for Here is God; 

Here, where The Three have trod, 

Father, Mother, and Son. 

Doubt not that to This Three, the Three in One 

Gave the enduring palms of victory won; 

In the high heavens to wave, 

But deeply rooted in an earthly grave. 

Here where their earthly shadows unsufficed 

In very truth is Christ. 

Through their Gethsemane, 

Up the steep summits of their Calvary, 

One, Who had passed before them, led The Three. 

His Strength Divine sustained 

His Human Brothers, tear and travel-stained. 

This is His High and Holy House that stands 

Not built alone with hands; 

Divinely Human Love 

Laid the deep stone and reared the arch above, 

Man's Immortality of Love to prove. 

Within this Holy Shrine 

The Human reaches to the All Divine. 

Oh, Childless Givers of the Gift, to ye 

What shall our giving be? 

Be this the gift we bring 

To reach them in the heavens on swift wing : 

As the lark soaring, as the lark to sing, 

Cry we with eyes grown dim 

Mother or Father unto Her or Him. 



TO MRS. N. C P. 

Thou, who from old with gentle fingers drew 

Our All within thy touch, 
Thou, chosen One^ of all our chosen Few, 

So few, but, oh, so Much ! 

Of all we were, of all we are, a part, 

Distance may not divide; 
Within the fairy circle of the Heart 

Thou standest at our side. 

Thou hast shone on us with a light so clear 

The years may not erase; 
Nay, rather doth each swift recurring year 

Make dearer still thy face. 

With thee, on golden heights of long ago, 

Our gold of Life was spent; 
Be thou beside us in the deeps we go, 

As on the heights we went. 



176 



"THE REGIONS WHICH ARE HOLY LAND" 



w. 



Friend whom God loved, I bear in mind 
What time we left the world behind, 
The little noisy world we trod. 
For the Deep Silences of God, 
And all the gracious strength that fills 
The circle of the gracious hills. 
The silvery veil was rent in two 
That hides the face of Ocean View, 
Pierced by the spears of Day, and flung 
On rock and roof and tree it hung; 
And wider waxed and greater grew 
The great gold jewel in the blue; 
To thee a weighed and measured sun. 
But unto me the Radiant One. 
Oh, was it thine, and was it mine, 
That wildly sweet, delirious wine 
That thou and I a moment quaffed, 
And pledged each other in, and laughed, 
Laughed that the world should be so fair 
To the last peaks of Everywhere; 
Laughed that our footsteps trod upon 
The gold fringed-curtains of the Dawn; 
Laughed, that we held within our hands 
The key of our enchanted lands, 
The gold clew to the golden maze 
Of our unwonted holidays. 



177 



And high above our heads unfurled 

On the blue heights above the world, 

Yon Heavens Highway Spirit trod 

The White Flag of the Truce of God. 

A Truce ! A Truce ! God's hour of Peace, 

That bids the lesser jangling cease. 

That with the Silence of His Voice 

Stills the earth's tumult and her noise ; 

That flings a royal canopy 

Above the serf, and sets him free. 

And all the blue of all the skies, 

And all the tender green that lies 

Upon the bosom of the May, 

And all the golden halls of Day, 

And all the silver lamps that shine 

In Night's blue dome, were thine and mine. 

The larger air, the fuller breath, 

Were free as life, were free as death. 

And we were free; oh, we were free, 

If lost in God's immensity. 

Not from a miser's fingers doled. 

But bounteous double hands of gold, 

So Youth and Hope together spent 

Their largesse on the way we went. 

Old for our land; a hundred years 

Has flowed the tide of hopes and fears, 

The tide of joy and grief has flowed 

And ebbed along the Mission Road, 

That thin gold thread, on which is strung, 

Unknown, imhonoured and unsung, 



178 



The jewels of futurity, 

Seed pearls of cities yet to be. 

Strange, is it not, that thou shouldst keep 

Thy Heaven guarded Halls of Sleep, 

Where Silence broods with brows august, 

And lips that speak not o'er her Trust. 

Where Sorrow, sad-browed sentinel. 

Cries with unwilling voice, "All's Well," 

Where thou and I upon a day 

inimitably far away, 

Rode full tilt in the laughing strife 

Across the captured walls of Life. 

Strange, is it not? Perchance, we trod 

Upon that unclaimed field of God, 

Where now the wise in grief may see 

The seed bed of Eternity, 

— Wet with a rain of tears — that yields 

The flowers for th' Elysian fields. 

The robes of Night are closer drawn 

About the breast of Cypress Lawn, 

And Day, with halting step, invades 

The sacred silence of the shades 

That the tall gum trees rise to make 

Wider and deeper, for thy sake. 

For thee, whose boyish fingers drew 

A patch of green, a strip of blue, 

Wherewith to cover up thy breast 

In the dim chambers of thy rest. 

But in our wise unwisdom, we 

Passed heedless o'er the graves to be. 



179 



Thanks to the kindly hand that locks 
Foreknowledge in Pandora's box. 
I thank my Gods that I may find 
Them in free spaces, unconfined, 
Not clipped within a man-made house 
Ascends the homage of my vows, 
To rise on futile wings and fall 
With broken heart against a wall. 
I thank Them that my prayers may rise 
On lesser wings, to nearer skies, 
Confined by yonder shining dome 
About the altar fires of Home; 
Nor lost in yonder vast profound 
Of blackness, flame encircled round, 
That Ancient Void, wherein we poured 
To some Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, 
Measures of ecstasies and dole. 
First fruits of body and of sotil. 
I thank my Gods that they are Here 
About me, imminently near. 
A God to vivify and fill 
The mountain and the mountain rill ; 
To ride upon the south wind warm. 
To loose or leash the thunder storm; 
To light and trim the altar fires 
Of Night on her perpetual pyres; 
To brush the envious clouds away 
That bar the access of the day; 
To stoop from plentitude of power. 
To paint or pluck a wayside flower. 

180 



Ah ! Friend of mine, thou couldst not hear 

The music patent to my ear, 

The Cosmic music, wild and sweet, 

Above the horses' ringing feet. 

Thine was the morning's radiant wine, 

The rainbow o'er our path was thine. 

These burnt out Fires of God were mine. 

'Tis dear to me, the way we went, 

For Grief and Joy aHke have spent 

Their substance on it ; every mile 

Is bounded by a tear or smile; 

A shining and a Sacred Way 

From the blue waters of the bay. 

To the white walls of San Jose. 

We passed through all the gracious green, 

Flawed with white villages between, 

And came where San Mateo stood 

A Dryad in a charmed wood; 

Unvexed by the woodsman's strokes, 

Her presence haunts her native oaks. 

She turns toward the west and calls 

The Oread of the mountain walls. 

And sees dim-eyed, as in a dream, 

The Naiad of her vanished stream. 

Ah, here where Dignity and Ease 

May rest care free beneath the trees. 

Ah, here should Beauty unconfined 

Reign over heart and soul and mind. 

An Attic Princess exiled far, 

'Tis here should rest her wandering car; 



181 



Here fiefed again, and repossessed 

Of her old East, in our new West. 

We passed and came where Belmont keeps 

Her halls upon her wooded steeps^ 

That rise, advance, divide, or meet. 

And fling their green waves at her feet. 

Or on some higher hill tossed high 

Break in green spray against the sky. 

I thank the Gracious Hand that spills 

The shining torrent of the hills. 

Not David with desire above 

Mine own, encompassed them with love. 

My feet have ever brushed them nigh. 

Mine eyes shall see them though I die. 

Hark ! From the distance Beresford calls 

To Belmont, o'er the mountain walls. 

And the wind hears the call, and weaves 

The answering whisper of green leaves; 

Earth's sweet and sacred melodies 

Sung on the hill tops by the trees, 

And echoed by the birds and bees. 

And I rejoice that I may reach 

These thin high subtleties of speech 

Of the Great Mother, reconciled 

In so far, to her wayward child. 

I, set within such straitened round. 

By such strong links of habit bound, 

The golden daily links, that close 

About a moonbeam, or a rose. 

Forbid by all my past to roam 



182 



Beyond the Covenant of Home, 

Whose hands have stayed the sacred Ark 

Deep graven with my finger's mark. 

All this, about me and mine own, 

I set above me on a throne. 

And kneel before, and throw above 

My royal canopy of Love. 

Our shadows withered by the sun 

Marked his increasing summits won. 

They scorched and shriveled in his flame, 

And vanished from us as we came 

Where Redwood tells the future gains 

Of her wide heritage of plains; 

As the seas level, as the seas 

Swept into ripples by the breeze, 

And archipelagoed by trees. 

Majestic spreading oaks, that rise 

Like island walls against the skies. 

To him, whose soul is tuned aright, 

What melodies of sound — and sight ; 

What fairy tapestries are wove 

Of the moonbeams in yonder grove. 

What white limbs flash when Dryads fling 

From them their leafy covering. 

All this so beautiful, alas ! 

All These so beautiful, must pass 

When Vesta lights her altar fires 

To be their sacrificial pyres, 

And stronger Lares of the hearth 

Cast out the Gods of outer earth. 



183 



Slowly the Sun God's chariot wheeled 

Down the long, westward sloping field; 

We followed in his steps and came 

Where Beauty rises, as a flame 

Flung round th' Unutterable Name. 

So shines her soul where Woodside fills 

A green nook, riven from the hills. 

From whence a shining valley keeps 

Step with its guardian mountain steeps. 

Men call it Portola; to me 

It is my fields of Arcadie. 

Ah, here were dignity and peace ; 

The larger statured soul's increase; 

Surcease from sordid loss and gain 

That leave a scar, or leave a stain. 

Here Life, with cleaner hands, might bring 

To Death a nobler offering. 

Here might my soul's abiding place 

Arise in antique Attic grace 

Of ivory moonbeams, and thereon 

A rose carved by the hands of Dawn. 

A pillar from the purple halls 

Of Night, torn from the higher walls. 

Whose lonely summits catch from far 

The silver gleaming O'f the star, 

A block from his triumphal way 

Gold glowing from the feet of Day. 

A window free to all the stars, 

A door latched by the morning's bars. 

And shining pinnacles above 



184 



The seven-hued web that Iris wove. 

A pathway to the Star of Hope, 

Long alien to my horoscope. 

Ah, here indeed, if I am I, 

As I was I in years gone by, 

I, who with boyish folly shod, 

Yet held the Shining Clew of God, 

Here drifting down serener streams 

Of time, upon my bark of dreams. 

Whose purple sails and ivory prow 

Flashed from the tumult of my brow. 

Here I unhappy, even I, 

Might proffer These above the sky; 

Above the sky, but not above 

My antique loyalty and love, 

Lustrous and held above the strife 

My Iridescent Pearl of Life. 

We came to where the cross roads meet 

And part beside the mountain's feet. 

And one road in contentment yields 

Its life to bound the level fields. 

And from their lesser summit gains 

The lesser guerdon of the plains. 

And one with higher purpose thrills 

To curb the hot pride of the hills, 

And sets its patient, stubborn length 

Against th' imperious mountain's strength. 

Here is a spot of Holy Ground; 

The roads encompass it around, 

Three pine trees from its bosom rise 



185 



To search the secrets of the skies ; 

They speak in whispers when the wind 

Cuts through the trees, and leaves are thinned, 

To two majestic oaks, that stand 

Across the road on either hand. 

And here of old a willow stood, 

An alien in the native wood. 

Oh, Heart ! Of all supreme desire, 

Oh, Soul ! With white wings in the mire, 

Oh God ! The Many Voiced, Who spoke 

A Threat and promise when I woke. 

If dearer be, where all is dear. 

With love exceeding, it is Here. 

The inner Holies, wherein stands 

The Altar of the Holy Lands, 

Wherefrom I shall not take again 

The Sacrament of Joy or Pain. 

Though here again my steps drew nigh, 

Not I, but the sad ghost of I ; 

Ghost of a shadow, wanned and thinned, 

And whipped upon the wanton wind. 

Would throw itself before, and clutch 

The Past with a despairing touch. 

Light laughter dashed its sparkling foam 

Towards the august purple dome 

That bent above, and seemed to chide 

With its solemnity star eyed. 

This spray upon the- waves of speech 

That rippled on our rainbowed beach. 

Which, we unknowing, was the shore 



186 



That guards the shrine of Nevermore. 
From hearts flung open wide, we spoke, 
Our words fantastic as the smoke 
That from the fading fires beneath 
Ascended in a wind tossed wreath. 
Light fancies, as might please the ear 
Of Faun or Oread Hstening near; 
Flotsam and jetsam, wayward flung. 
From Pagan heart and lawless tongue. 
I, Pagan of a type antique, 
And thou half savage and half Greek ; 
Drunk with Delight and crowned with Joy, 
In the divine right of the boy. 
It pleased me well to win such grace, 
Though but a white-winged moment's space, 
To mix my deeper soul's allay 
With the bright heart's gold of the boy; 
And drawn from my forbidden heights. 
To warm my heart at the twin lights 
That flashed and sparkled from the sheath 
Of the brown velvet underneath. 
Oh, burnt out marvel of the eyes 
That watched with me — in Paradise, 
Through the white glamour of a night 
Drenched in star shining and moonlight; 
In what fair heavens was relumed 
The splendour that the God resumed. 
The light which might not pass away, ■ 
Though thou art dust beneath the clay. 
Sleep laid his finger on thy lips ; 



187 



Sleep touched thy brown eyes to eclipse; 

And that which was in essence Thou 

Vanished from lip and eye and brow, 

And left me lonely in the night, 

God and myself and my soul's light. 

And a wind whispered to the trees 

The secret of old melodies. 

The silence of the forest stirred 

My soul with a forgotten word. 

That fluttered on elusive wing, 

That circled round my brow, to bring 

Increasing memories, dim but vast. 

Of us in our remoter past. 

And in this place and on this night 

I won of my withheld birthright 

Some little part, a golden page 

Torn glowing from a Golden Age. 



The hill slopes eastward, that the Sun 

May linger ere his heights be won. 

And lingering, turn adoringly 

To the best sight his eyes may see, 

The Perfect Pearl of Attic Art, 

God's soul and Man's in equal part. 

Man dreamed a pearl, the pearl he wrought 

With All the Gods behind the thought. 

So fair ! Its counterpart might rise 

On their Olympus o'er the skies. 

Wherein the Sun God and the Nine 



188 



Might claim, with jealousy divine, 

A portion of Athene's shrine. 

And thou and I, upon the rim 

Of that green hill top, stood with Him ; 

And saw, perchance with eyes grown dim, 

The rosy lipped caress of Dawn 

Adoringly and slow withdrawn. 

Pressed on the new-born Parthenon. 

We stood upon a turf inlaid 

With tangled breadths of light and shade. 

And we were Greek, and Greece was Greece 

In her fair prime and prime's increase. 



The vision vanished from my eyes 
Left staring at the midnight skies. 
I watched the patient stars grow dim 
And pass beyond the heaven's rim; 
They hung a moment on the crest 
Of the black mountains in the west. 
Upon the redwoods branches tossed 
They signaled to me, and were lost. 
The forest stirred with vague unrest. 
And an old memory in my breast. 
I hushed my heart beneath the shade 
To hear the wood Gods in the glade ; 
I leaned my soul with listening ear 
An antique melody to hear 
I heard of yore where rivers ran 
Through reedy vales Arcadian, 

189 



The wild sweet syrinx pipes of Pan. 
And at the old remembered chords 
My thoughts flashed from me into words ; 
Slipped from the mind's leash, and outran 
Beyond the measure of my plan, 



A PRAYER UNTO THE GREAT GOD PAN. 

Oh, where art Thou, on yonder charmed mountains, 

From whence enchanted fountains 

Slip through the tangled brake, 

'Neath the tall redwoods' plumed heads to slake 

Their deeper thirst at yonder shining lake — 

Here dost thou sit and call 

To the white Naiad of the waterfall? 

Clothed in the meshes of her golden hair 

Is she not passing fair, 

And wonderfully white. 

Seen in the ebon chambers of the night? 

Beats not thy God's heart quicker at the sight 

Of that fair body, seen 

A gleam of white amidst the living green? 

Or dost thou rather sit alone, and brood 

In some far solitude, 

Of all thy lands that lie 

In field and forest marsh and mountain high 

Far flung to the far edges of the sky ? 



190 



Here dost thou think of Her 

While the soft sighing winds of memory stir? 

Still dost thou see within thy fierce embrace 

That fair and frightened face, 

Still do thine arms enfold 

The roses and the ivory and gold 

Of that fair form within thy wanton hold, 

That left thee but a reed 

To serve the heights and depths of a God's need? 

Yet doth her immortality of gain 

Rise o'er the loss and pain ; 

Her weak and woman's heart 

Become th' immortal instrument of Art, 

Of the wide Universe of Sound a part 

Throbs on thy mountains, lingers 'neath thy trees, 

So'ul-stirring and heart-breaking melodies. 

Star shining and moonlight upon thy brow, 

Art thou not near us now, 

Now while the earth receives 

Artemis' golden-feathered shafts, and weaves 

Them with the benediction of green leaves; 

A tapestry to fall 

In green and gold upon thy palace wall? 

Lo ! thou art near to me, for I am Greek, 
Moulded in lines antique; 
Greek, when the perfect flower 



191 



Of Greece blew whitest in a golden hour, 
Whereof the scent remains to us for dower; 
Crushed 'neath the ages' feet, 
But still immortally and wildly sweet. 

And here is Greece, and here is Arcadie, 

Now, here, about us three. 

Thou and the boy and I, 

We, who lie here, and thou, who standest by. 

So near that thou mightst touch us where we lie. 

Now, while the forest grieves 

With an old secret whispered by the leaves. 

Now hath he pledged and given awhile to keep 

His boyish soul to Sleep; 

He lies with his fair face 

Upon his arm, in strong, unconscious grace. 

I may not seek his soul's abiding place. 

Who have no clew to keep 

Step with him in his labyrinths of sleep. 

Thou, wert thou Heracles, then he to thee 

Should the young Hylas be ; 

Wert thou the God of Light, 

Thou shouldst stoop down from an adoring height 

To bear him past the jealous West Wind's might. 

Lest Hyacinthus slain 

Repurple earth with his sweet flowers of pain. 

Now he is far from me, and thou art near, 
A God whom not I fear; 

192 



I, too, am earth of Earth, 

Earth born, I seek the fond, famihar hearth, 

In the wide halls of her who gave me birth ; 

And love thee not the less 

For thy goats' hoofs and thy limbs' shagginess. 

Sweet, sweet, oh, passing sweet, it were to hear, 

Though but with my soul's ear, 

Thy pipes, oh. Great God Pan, 

In wild, delirious melodies that ran 

Like wild fire through the vales Arcadian. 

Oh, sound them for my sake 

That I may scale the heavens of heart break. 

Oh, Pan, if from the mountain or the forest, 

Come when our need is sorest; 

Stride o'er the shadowed page 

With thy goats' hoofs and crush with a God's rage 

The false ideals of an iron age; 

Teach us the golden lore 

Of all the golden pages of before. 



— So ran my fancies while I kept 
My vigils o'er the boy who slept; 
So near, he slumbered at my side ; 
So far, the shoreless seas are wide 
And deep that rose between us twain ; 
He, like young Hyacinthus, slain 
By a God's Love; for Sleep awhile 

193 



Had slain his soul, whose boyish smile 
Flashed on white wings across the grace 
Of his serene, untroubled face; 
And I, who reached out from the Night 
Above her darkness and her light, 
To struggle with the Infinite, 
Now Dawn, in rose and saffron shod. 
Stepped through the gateways of the God, 
With rosy-lipped persuasion won 
Night's summits to the Radiant One ; 
On the broad shield his blazoned bars 
Displaced her coronet of stars; 
Despoiled of all her gems, she fled 
With one pale star upon her head. 
And the old miracle, retold 
In rose, in saffron, and in gold, 
Threw wide the folded gates, that keep 
Their ward upon the eyes of sleep. 
And that the mountain still was strong 
That man had girdled with his thong, 
And that its heart but half confessed 
His leash across its haughty breast; 
We rose when Dawn proclaimed the Day, 
And went with him our westward way. 
A hundred heights impetuo'us cast 
Their shadow o'er us as we passed. 
And every gracious moment drew 
The curtain from some fairer view. 
We scaled its crest, and stood at length 
Above the mountain's conquered strength. 



194 



And East and West on either hand, 

The Poet's Land, The Holy Land, 

A stainless vision without flaw 

Flashed up beneath us, and we saw, 

Saw in the distance Stanford's lift 

A mortal love's Liimortal Gift; 

A gracious and a Godlike fruit 

Of Human and of bitter root; 

A priceless wine, whose grapes were trod 

And crushed beneath the feet of God; 

Hers is the Large Writ Scroll, to prove 

Man's Immortality of Love; 

And all the great and gracious dower 

From Sorrow golden-linked to Power. 

So sharp the mountain walls divide 

The alien worlds of either side. 

The red hearts of the East and West 

Throbbed with full pulses through the breast 

That lay on either side confessed. 

Lay East th' illumined scroll of God, 

But half effaced where man had trod; 

A shining palimpsest, unrolled 

In green and azure, lit with gold, 

God's chosen colours, scattered free, 

Green Time's fair handmaid, Blue to be. 

The warden of Eternity. 

And fairly written, strong and sure. 

Here Man had scrawled his signature 

On field and forest, stamping down 

The deeper impress of a town, 



195 



White, between blue and green, to stand 

His seals upon the goodly land. 

The goodly land of corn and wine, 

Of reddening tree, and purpling vine ; 

The summer suns, the winter rains, 

Run in sweet madness through her veins ; 

And the kind, ordered madness yields 

The trebled tithes of fertile fields. 

The lesser forehead of the plain 

Is wrinkled o'er with loss and gain; 

But still the Sacred West shall be 

Free mountains, bounded by the free, 

No man's dominion of the sea. 

Here man hath set no stain and flaw 

Of his forged seal on Nature's law. 

When the young stars for gladness sang 

These heights and deeps with echoes rang; 

And still the Poet's vision sees 

In all the multitudinous trees, 

The branches that the fair young Earth 

Set for the Mayday round her hearth, 

In the first springtime of her birth. 

Whereo'f today La Honda weaves 

Herself a coronet of leaves. 

Queen of the twilight lands, that pay 

No homage to the God of Day ; 

His golden arrows blunted fall 

Against her haughty forest wall. 

A woodland princess, in her eyes 

Is more of sunset than sunrise. 



196 



She sees the white tents of her folk 

Encircled by the camp fire's smoke, 

Between her and the ruddy glow 

The barefoot boys pass to and fro ; 

Their careless fingers clutch the wealth 

Of stainless and untainted health; 

They learn the lore of Nature's books, 

The woods, the mountains, and the brooks, 

The shining Words of God, that teach 

The soul the Universal Speech. 

Day fled, defeated and discrowned, 

Night's sable garments swept us round. 

So near ! Our souls together crept, 

Huddled away from Her who swept 

In all the dreadful pageantry 

That Jove unveiled to Semele, 

Wherefrom man hides his eyes, lest sight 

Be blasted by excess of light. 

So hid our souls from Her; but soon 

Upon the heights a silver moon, 

The top and crown of all I dreamed. 

Flashed through the purple void, and seemed. 

Seen through the branches of the trees, 

A shining sail on unknown seas. 

And the fair Sister of the Day 

Brushed with her light our fears away; 

The younger, kindlier God dispelled 

That August A\vfulness of Eld. 

Full soon thy captive spirit wore 

The chains of the kind conqueror, 



197 



The gentle and the golden chains 
Wherein the loser tells his gains. 
It is an awful thing to keep 
Long vigils in the shrine of Sleep; 
To stare deep-eyed upon the eyes 
From which no answering light replies; 
To question lips that may not reach 
The shattered golden strings of speech; 
To seek the soul whose wings are furled 
On unknown heights of some new world. 
An awful — and a holy thing, 
I bid My Mother Night to bring 
From Her high heights, that holiest are. 
Where the star whispers to the star, 
Through tjie awed skies the Cosmic Spell 
That links the Heavens, Earth and Hell 
With secrets that they may not tell; 
Hence let her bring again, although 
My heart shall break anew to know 
AH the vast blackness and the light 
That burnt the blackness of the night; 
And the tall redwoods boughs unfurled 
Whose topmost branches roofed the world, 
Where my unquiet spirit stood 
Between thee and the solitude 
Of God, the mountains and the wood. 
Ah, Friend, the Human overmuch 
Drew me from some Diviner Touch; 
Else had I, watching in the bright 
And perfect beauty of that night, 



198 



Bridged with my soul the deep abyss 

Where yonder Upper Silence is; 

Had won the subtle spell that taught 

The Whence, the Where, the Why ; had caught 

Some secret of Eternal things ; 

Had drunk deep draughts of heavenly springs ; 

Had ate of that forbidden fruit 

Whose flower was madness, and whose root 

Crept through waste spaces of the years 

To underflowing streams of tears. 

Friend of an Unforgotten Day, 

What light shall fall upon my way 

Save that heart-breaking splendour, cast 

Through the stained windows of the Past, 

That grim, gaunt shrine where Memory is; 

Stabbed with forbidden ecstasies, 

Sharp pangs of old-time Joy and Pain 

Flung from their ruthless hands, to stain 

With sullen and with dreadful red 

Her white lips pressed against her Dead. 

Oh, My Dear Lands ! My Radiant Lands ! 

Where Pleasure gave me both her hands. 

Where Hope her gilded bauble set 

Whereof no hue remaineth yet ; 

Now only black-robed Memory broods 

Above her barren solitudes. 

One hope remains of old desires; 

One glowing coal of faded fires; 

That in their green and gentle breast 

I rest who knew not, shall find rest. 



199 



Aye, soft shall fall o'er heart and brow. 
Unquiet, but grown quiet now, 
Though careless flung by stranger hands 
The earth of My Remembered Lands. 



200 



THE HOUSE OF SPLExNDID VISIONS 

Prince of Desolation, God to whom no gracious odors rise 
Of the flowers upon the altar, or the meats of sacrifice. 
There are dearer, richer offerings that find favor in thine 
eyes. 

Thine, the subtle odors rising from the garlands of regret; 
Thine, the tears that scorch in falling; thine, the soul's 

corroding sweat, 
Poured from brimming cups of anger, when The Twelve 

are secret met. 

I shall know thee when thou comest, thou whose livid 

brows are crowned 
With a wreath of scarlet poppies, plucked upon the ghostly 

ground 
Where the sullen waters wander, demon haunted, without 

sound. 

I shall know thee not to fear thee; thou and I have often 

met 
In the jousting at the tourney, where the lists of Life are 

set; 
We have met, and thou wert victor ; but the end was never 

yet. 

Shall I know and shall I wonder, in the dawn of some new 
day, 

201 



At the House of Splendid Visions, tenantless and in decay, 
And the halls a God hath dwelt in, mingling with the 
common clay? 

Shall I wake to fear and loathing when the earth-worm 

nearer crawls. 
Creeping through the open doorways, creeping o'er the 

crumbling walls, 
Rioting with rites unholy through the dark, deserted halls? 

Were it all of life to live, and were it all of death to die. 
But the ages bear in travail, and the new-born babe is I, 
Whipped in fiery circles onward through the cycles of the 
sky. 

Though the perfect Pearl of "Memory, cast in death's cor- 
roding wine. 

Lose its lustre, pale and vanish from its old, familiar 
shrine, 

Yet shall "I" be lord and master in the halls of Thine and 
Mine. 

*T," the redly glowing centre of a black circumference ; 
*T," the verb to be and suffer, in an ever present tense ; 
*T," a shadow, dragged a captive, in the triumph of events. 

I am I through all the ages of a surety; yet am I 

But a dream of angry devils, whipped with curses from on 

high. 
Or the jest of some Mad Boy God, drunk with nectar in 

the sky? 

202 



THE WILL OF GOD 

INSCRIBED, WITHOUT PERMISSION, TO THE "PKESIDENTS" 
OF THE CENTRAL AMERICAN '^REPUBLICS/' 

God said, ''I have waited long, 

For the years are Mine to wait, 
With a patience over-strong 

And a mercy over-great. 

"But now I weary at length 

Of My heavy wrath long stored; 
And I bare My arm of strength 

And the lightning of My sword. 

"Let My chosen one go forth 

With the message of My mouth; 
And My armies of the North 

To war on the rebel South. 

"For the land is wan and vexed 

That a double rule divides; 
And the people sore perplexed 

When the law shifts with the tides. 

"And My ways are not the ways 

Of the sons of men, and still 
From out of its tangled maze 

Shines the gold- clew of My Will; 

203 



"That the sword of Justice bring. 
The shelter of Mercy's shield, 

And that Peace and Order spring 
From the chaos of the Field. 

'T have watched and waited long. 
And I come to count My sheaves ; 

But the tares are high and strong 
And with naught thereon but leaves. 

"I will sweep them from My path; 

They shall wither as a gourd 
In the furnace of My wrath. 

I have sworn it, I, the Lord." 



204 



THE SHADOW BEFORE— AT NEW YEAR'S 

Blew bugles from a far off height; 

The bells rang sweet and clear; 
Wild music in the frosty night ; 

The Birthnight of the Year, 

From Christmas revels lagged behind 

Still stood upon the floor 
The Lighted Tree that brought to mind 

That Other Babe of yore. 

To welcome him we drew the latch ; 

The Boy was passing fair, 
With eyes of cloudless blue, to match 

The sunshine of his hair. 

And, oh, they cried, our steps shall keep 

Step with the Boy who goes 
Through springtime daisies drifted deep, 

And jungles of the rose. 

Our Golden Rosary of Days 

In shining sequence told, 
A bead for Summer's orchard ways. 

And Autumn's sheaves of gold. 

And when again returns The Birth, 

Our wonted All shall reach 
Half circled round the wonted hearth, 

And each clasp hands with each. 



205 



But one, whose sad, prophetic soul 

Strange marks of torture bore, 
Saw from the Boy's white hands unroll 

The Shadow Cast Before. 

Ere Time with blighting hand shall touch 

The Boy's gold hair with gray, 
Of these, much loved, and loving much. 

One shall have passed away. 

One grown All Patient, He or She, 

With white and folded hands 
Shall drift out on the unknown sea 

To undiscovered lands. 

Peace ! Peace ! With Him or Her be Peace. 

But woe to those bereft. 
No truce with braggart peace from these 

Whom He or She hath left. 

But these shall draw themselves apart 

And sit with eyes grown dim; 
Hands clutched above the breaking heart 

That breaks for Her or Him. 

Shall hear with old remembered pain 
THAT voice, distinct, but thinned. 

Rise o'er the falling of the rain. 
And struggle with the wind. 



206 



And they shall tremble at the sound. 

Oh, Nature's Broken Trust ! 
How wind and rain are tossed around 

Above that Sacred Dust. 

Dust ! Dust ! Ah, Dust were passing well 

If Nature's kindlier law. 
Oh, Seven Times Heated Fires of Hell ! 

H Dust were all they saw ! 

But THIS ! This ghoulish feast of Death, 

His grim and ghastly spoils, 
From which, with terror gasping breath. 

The heart of man recoils. 

Drown Memory in the black abyss. 

Heap high the earth above. 
Oh, Christ, the pitiful! Is THIS 

That which we used to love? 



20; 



TO THE WOMAN 

WRITER OF THE BATTLE HYMN. 

What make you, weak and Woman's hand 
With these sharp tools of Art? 

Or seek within the Poet's Land 
Where Woman hath no part? 

The fiefs are many in the Land 

That owns our Lord, the Sun; 
The Star Crowned Kings abo'Ut him stand, 

The vassal Queens were none. 

Who bade thee rise above the height 

Of Nature's niggard plan. 
To crown thy Woman's brows with light 

And overtop the Man? 

Who gave into Thy Woman's hand 

The Lightning of the Lord, 
And bade thee spill upon the land 

His Cup of Wrath long stored? 

Who bade thy Woman's gentle voice 

The Trump of God to roll. 
And rise above the battle's noise 

The Thunder of the Soul ? 

Thy words the dying soldier found 

The thunder and its light. 
He wrapped him in the light and sound 

And went into the Night. 

208 



GOD AND THE POET 

God and the Poet and Night, 
And the Night stood still upon 

The top of her topmost height 
Midway between dusk and dawn. 

Night, and a light in the night 

That lit itself and illumed ; 
Wonderful, mystical, white, 

That burned and was unconsumed. 

And the night was tranced to a hush ; 

And sudden the winds grew still. 
And God from the Burning Bush 

Spoke to the Poet His Will. 

God said to the Poet, "Thou 
Art royal. I give thee to wear 

A crown of thorns for thy brow ; 
But thyself shall fashion it fair. 

"Thou shalt fashion it in My Sight; 

Strength do I give thee to keep; 
I give thee light in the night ; 

Watch thou, while thy brothers sleep. 

"On the altar of sacrifice 

Thou shalt lay at My feet thy heart. 
Thou shalt buy thy soul with a price 

Since soul of My Soul thou art." 

209 



And the Poet stood upright 

And named the Wonderful Name 

And his soul in that fierce light 
Stood naked and without shame. 

While ever within his sight 
The splendours rose and fell 

That veil th' intolerable light 
Of the Presence made visible. 



210 



THE PASSING OF JOY 

What doth young Hyacinthus here, or is it he of Troy, 
Or loved of Goddess or of God, but each the fairest boy 
That ever set a warld at arms, or bade a God employ 
His shining soul in servile deeds to win a favor coy. 

Or is it that fair Spartan lad, forever beautiful. 

So passing fair the water nymphs raised their white arms 

to pull 
Him down amidst the pleasant shades of waters dim and 

cool. 
For whom the great Alcides crowns his hero brows with 

wool. 

Or hath the young Antinous arisen from the wave. 

And burst the leaden chains of death, the dungeons of the 

grave, 
Who led a vassal to his will, his crowned and sceptred 

slave ; 
The Master of the Roman world — and impotent to save. 

Nay, it is none of these dead boys, so beautiful of yore. 
Who wave their wan, white hands to us, from their dim, 

ghostly shore. 
But He, my Well Beloved Joy, is fairer than the four, 
Though each was fairest of the fair that all the ages bore. 

His brows are wonderfully white; his lips are coral red; 
Upon his cheeks the rose of York and Tudor rose are 
wed; 

211 



And when he opens his blue eyes, the erring dawn shall 

tread 
On stranger ways of unknown heights, bewildered and 

misled. 

Alack ! Alack ! What ails the boy ? He hath gone far 

to seek 
In some dim, undiscovered land, that patience pale and 

meek, 
That dulls the azure of his eyes, the roses of his cheek. 
Thrice Beautiful and Best Beloved ! Speak to me when 

I speak ! 

Dead ! Dead ! And shall such Beauty die, such Glory pass 

away, 
Such Splendour leave its native heavens to hide its light 

in clay? 
Joy dead ! Then let the shining dawn forsake the gates 

of day; 
That heaven and earth alike may wear a monotone of 

gray. 



212 



GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT 

Lord of Hosts, God of Battles, arm the Right ! 

When the little Island Empire goes like David to the fight. 

Be Thou then the shield before her, 

Be the wing to hover o'er her, 
Be her cloud of smoke by day, and be her cloud of fire by 
night. 

Let the justice of her pleading 

With Thy Spirit interceding, 
Rise above the noise of battle and find favor in Thy sight. 

Lord of Hosts, God of Justice, shield the Just ! 
Be a mighty fortress to her, though in Thee is not her 
trust. 

For her cause is high and human. 
For our Brothers born of woman. 
Twice two hundred squalid millions, cowering abject in 
the dust. 

With her strength may she uplift them, 
Save them from themselves, and gift them. 
Dower them with the gift of ransom from the brutal 
Cossack's lust. 

Lord of Hosts, God of Mercy, know Thine own ! 

For Thy harvest fields stand ready where the seeds of 
wrath were sown. 

When Thy sickles are a-reaping. 
When Thy sheaves of grain are heaping. 



213 



When Thy harvesters are vanished, and Thy harvest fields 
all mown, 

Comes the hour of Thy awarding, 
Thy condemning, Thy rewarding, 

Sift their motives out, and judge them at the footstep of 
Thy throne. 

Lord of Hosts, God of Vengeance, lift Thy hand ! 
For a long black shadow lies athwart, and blights an 
ancient land. 

Serpent-subtile in its creeping, 

Tiger-cruel in its leaping, 
Let it wither as a gourd before the fire of Thy command. 

God of Vengeance, when Thy thunder 

Parts the plunderer from his plunder. 
Cursed be he who moves the landmarks and the metes 
from where they stand. 



214 



THE GOLDEN CUPS OF GOD 

INSCRIBED^ WITHOUT PERMISSION^ TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Pray you, sir, content your Highness with the tribute clue 
to Ciesar. 
Touch not THESE ! The Golden Vessels bear the 
Covenant of our lands. 
Touch them not, or touch them lightly, with your soldier's 
hands, for these, sir, 
THESE, the Levites of the Temple scarce may touch 
with reverent hands. 

Break your adamant of purpose, rash, impetuous and 
unswerving; 
Bare your feet ! 'Tis holy ground whereon the Poet's 
feet have trod. 
Holy, holy to the Lord, whereon his priestly hands in 
serving, 
Poured the sacrificial wine from out the Golden Cups of 
God. 

They wxre wrought by cunning workmen, in the cot and 
in the castle. 
Haughty hand of Norman noble, humble hand of Saxon 
thrall, 
Shaped the English metal deftly, midst the weeping or the 
wassail, 
By the turf fires, at the ingle nook, the torches in the 
hall. 



215 



Cleanly souls of Northern stature climbed their Jacob's 
stairs of serving. 
And the cognizance of princes lights the path of him 
who serves. 
Did the graver slip within their hands ? Then it may be in 
the swerving 
That the golden lines grew tangled in a knot of gracious 
curves. 

So the goodly cups were fashioned; and the splendour of 
their gleaming 
Lit the mediaeval shadows, as they passed from mouth to 
mouth ; 
And His Spirit touched the Poet's lips and the Poet in his 
dreaming 
Set the Northern gold a-sparkle with the jewels of the 
South. 

Purple gems from Grecian quarfies, solemn monotones of 
colour; 
Pearls despoiled from Eastern peoples; Latin gems of 
cosmic flame; 
Jewish jewels from the Temple, higher, holier and duller 
With their smouldering depths a-tremble with the 
radiance of the NAME. 

High and holy hands have held them; and the splendour 
of the Human 
Threw diviner lights upon the antique vessels in their 
hands. 



216 



Standing upright in the Presence, unafraid, though born 
of woman, 
Heaping to a jealous God the First Fruits of our EngHsh 
lands. 

Shakespeare, with his arms colossal circling all the lands 
and ages ; 
Keats, whose boyish hands essayed to guide the coursers 
of the sun; 
Milton, soiling his high office with his treason's hell-got 
wages ; 
Tennyson, the golden throated, from the purple heights 
he won. 

These have served the Sacred Vessels that have bound the 
kindred nations ; 
Linked and leashed in laws of loving by their golden 
arabesque. 
They have served to pour our father's God the wine of 
our oblations. 
Though your Highness' haughty humor hold the antique 
lines grotesque. 

Servant, masterful in serving; Master, to your servants 
loyal; 
Hotspur in the van of Progress; final apex of His plan; 
High born Tribune of the people, wearing lightly the 
Blood Royal, 
Long descended, high ascended, to the red heart of the 
MAN. 



217 



Undefiled and undiminished, give us back our ancient 
letters ! 
Moses smote the desert rock, the thirsty people drank 
their fill; 
Of the Courtesy we crave you, we, your clients, are your 
debtors, 
Greater that it flows reluctant from the granite of your 
will. 

Master mind O'f many moods, your mood may make, but 
may not alter; 
Lead the armies of the Morning, and we follow where 
you lead. 
Handle not to their misuse the Sacred Vessels on the 
altar. 
By the Splendour of the Soul of God, they still shall 
serve our need ! 



218 



THE CALL TO ARMS 

Children of the Rising Sun, return ! 

For new Hghts are glowing where the ancient watch fires 
burn. 

Come from lowlands and from highlands, 

And a thousand tropic islands, 
Tangled in a knot of emeralds in the amethystine blue. 

To the mother-land that bore ye, 

With the Sun Flag floating o'er ye, 
And the old familiar pathways that your wandering foot- 
steps knew. 

Children of the Rising Sun, come home ! 
From the far-off western land across the foam. 

Drop the mattock and the spade, 

And the tools of toil and trade ; 
There are nobler tools a-forging in the furnace of events. 

There's the land for your assistance, 

There's the foe for your resistance. 
With his vast and brutish body sprawled across two conti- 
nents. 

Children of the Rising Sun, go forth ! 
For your Mother sets a banquet for the vultures in the 
north. 

There'll be service at the feast 
For the greatest and the least, 
For each son of the old empire, old two thousand years 
ago. 

219 



While the crimson tide is flowing, 
And the banquet lights are glowing, 
And the vultures gorge their greedy fill upon the spread 
of snow. 

Children of the Rising Sun, arise ! 

For the fiery skeins of lightning are tangled in the skies. 

There's the roll and crash of thunder 

As the old worlds fall asunder; 
But the strong young eastern Britain from the storm and 
stress shall spring; 

With the glamour of old splendour, 

New ideals to defend her. 
And with shelter for the peoples of the Orient 'neath her 
wing. 



220 



"THE GIFT TO DIE" 

TO MY LADY FORTUNE. 

Out on you, harlot ! Gorged with gold, 
Giving your all to churl and clown ; 

Drab of a play day, bought and sold. 
Body and soul and scarlet gown. 

Flung as a plaything to the base, 
Tossed as a toy from man to man. 

Where each may win you and wear a space, 
And he may have you and hold — who can. 

And so you have come for a moment's stay. 

I may clip and kiss you and claim my right. 
And who was it won you yesterday? 

And who shall win you tomorrow night? 

Yet yesterday to have won your kiss. 
The Judas kiss from your lips that fell. 

Why, I would have given my all for this, 
Body and soul to burn in hell. 

Now, Patience, a beggar, sits outworn ; 

The gates of Reserve are flung apart; 
And I write my name in the Book of Scorn 

With the last black drops of a breaking heart. 

I had not cared that my life should hold 
In a red and rabble rout of noise, 



221 



Nor fame, nor power,- nor love, nor gold. 
The overgrown children's outworn toys. 

They were naught to a soul like mine ; for so 
I had been content had the path I trod 

Borne the Red Flower of the Poet's woe. 
And the Bitter Fruit of the Tree of God. 

Oh, he who is born to the Purple, Knous. 

And God be my Judge ! I knew it well, 
While thrice a decade of wants and woes 

I served my time at the gates of hell. 

But who that passed me by should see 
Beneath the cloak of hodden gray. 

The purple and gold of Royalty 
Sparkle and flash and burn away? 

And up from desperate depths of me 

And down from despairing heights, my eye 

Flung them with mocking courtesy 
The Poet's arrogant I Am I. 

I had but a soul, and I threw my all, 
A pearl of price, in an Esau's pot. 

I clinched the chain on, sorrow's thrall, 
And little reward I won, God wot. 

I bent my soul to the body's need, 

And wrought at a starved and stubborn soil. 



222 



Apples of Sodom were my meed, 

And the jester's cap to crown my toil. 

I chose perforce the worser part. 

And the pangs of an impotent desire 
Stabbed in and seared against my heart 

Cut like a sword and burn like fire. 

Roses grow by the garden walk ; 

Roses grow on the garden wall ; 
They are dear to me, flower and stalk, 

Heart's blood, soul's sweat drenched them all. 

A star in a midnight tempest tossed ; 

A gleam of light upon wintry seas; 
And so — the battle was fought and lost, 

And my soul was priced at toys like these. 

And my soul against its prison bars 

Beat in its impotent despair, 
For the clean white spaces of the stars 

And the blue serene of the upper air; 

For the cool green silence of the wood ; 

For the white-lipped voices of the sea ; 
For the purple hills of solitude, 

And the golden paths of liberty. 

But if for a moment, in idle whim, 
Or patient passion, I tried to slip 



223 



The gyves from bruised and bleeding limb, 
Duty, the master, cracked his whip. 

Out on you, now, you two-faced jade! 

Your fickle favors are dearly bought. 
Come if you will and ply your trade. 

But come as you will, you will come unsought. 

Though you gave as a God might give, and not 
From a miser's fingers, scrimped and doled, 

As a God might give to a God, God wot, 
Of his myrrh and frankincense and gold, 

I would pass them by with heedless eyes; 

I would not see, or I would not care; 
I would give them all for the pearl of price 

That you can not give and I can not wear; 

For the soul that answered the wood bird's note, 
Or spread its wings and adventured far, 

For the heart that under the ragged coat 
Throbbed to the pulse of sun and star. 

Though you flung your glittering jewels high 
Till they spilled from the golden cup again, 

I would choose from all but "The Gift to Die," 
And to cleanse my soul from the souls of men. 



224 



THE GOLDEN SPURS OF GOD 

Leave me here, I pray, a little. Thou art Thou and I am L 
Thou and I rise up between us, and the mad Gods in the 

sky. 
Thou art cloth of gold of morning, lit with iridescent 

gleams ; 
I am purple stuff of midnight, pierced with opal light of 

dreams ; 
Thou art soft and shining, painted pink and white, a pretty 

toy. 
Dandled on the lap of Nature, fondled in the arms of Joy ; 
I, the ghost of some lost God, who wander on from age 

to age. 
Through the endless cycles, seeking my withholden heritage. 
I am immortelles of graveyards; thou art roses drenched 

in dew; 
Who shall bind the twain together? What shall be be- 
tween us two? 
Leave me now, again I pray thee, for the sentry stars are 

drawn 
All about night's ancient temples, midway between dusk 

and dawn. 
Playday friend, await our play-days. I alone would win 

and wear 
In my soul a deeper secret than the heart of man may 

bear. 
Raised upon despairing heights and plunged in guilty deeps 

again. 
Wrenching from the churlish warders Whence and Where 

and Why and When. 

225 



'Tis the place as once I knew it. I, the ghost of him who 

knew, 
Free to walk the earth till cock-crow, seek my olden paths 

anew ; 
Ocean View, that from the distance overlooks the shifting 

sands 
Flung from roaring ocean caverns on her wan and wasted 

lands. 
Here of old, a boy I wandered where the ocean mists are 

. curled 
Round the hilltops sloping westward to the edges of the 

world. 
In a labyrinth of shadows, dreaming some old dream anew. 
Clutching with a boyish ardor broken sword and tangled 

clew. 
Many a night from yonder casement did I watch Orion 

rise 
With his jeweled girdle striding with wide steps across 

the skies; 
Many a night I watched the Pleiads with their patient 

eyes grown dim 
Seek beloved and lost Electra strayed beyond the heaven's 

rim; 
Many a night when night was flying did I see a pallid 

Dawn 
Shrink reluctant from her chambers with a pall of mist 

o'er drawn; 
Saw the sentry stars retreating, driven from the heavenly 

field, 
And the golden bars of morning flaunt above night's sable 

shield. 

226 



All the pageantry of Nature fed the altar fires of Art, 
Twin and equal royal sisters, regnant ever in my heart. 
And I walked in rhythmic madness and in airy fetters 

bound, 
Captive to a dream of Beauty and a melody of sound. 
Hark ! What God compelling thunder splits the earth 

from pole to pole, 
What divine abysses open, driving lightnings round my 

soul ! 
Hark ! What ecstasies of battle and what clash of Gods at 

strife, 
'Tis the Blind Old Beggar calls me, thundering at the 

gates of life. 
Homer, dead, but ever Deathless; Homer, the All Seeing 

blind; 
Homer, begging bitter bread, and King of all the Kings of 

mind. 
Falls a gleam of Antique Splendour on the jacket of the 

boy; 
NOW, the Golden Age about him, HERE, before the walls 

of Troy. 
Dawn above beleaguered Ilium and the Greek encampment 

hums 
With the voice of many peoples, for divine Achilles 

comes. 
Pallas, cold and Tudor hearted, with the lightning of her 

glance 
Flashed from frozen deeps of azure, leads the van of 

Greek advance. 
Phoebus, standing from the rabble of the lesser Gods 

apart, 

227 



Guards the sacred walls that rose responsive to his Poet - 

Art. 
Oh, the splendour of the madness; oh, the glory of the 

dream 
Flashing through the gates of ivory, with All Beauty for 

its theme. 
Fancy, brought to bed of Sorrow, in his shower of golden 

rain 
Feels the throbbing of Her First Born, with an old remem- 
bered pain. 
Fancy, fleeing Time's duress on wings of wide aspiring, 

spills 
Antique gems from Eastern quarries on a slope of Western 

hills. 
While the boy, as Ganymede, caught in upper space and 

whirled 
On titanic wings of light above the shadow of the world, 
Ate in trembling of the spirit and with gasping of the 

breath 
That forbidden Fruit of Life in those forgotten halls of 

death. 
Homer's magic and the boy ! Ah, here was wild and bitter 

work 
Brewed in some Medea's caldron in a haunted midnight 

mirk. 
Woe to him whose boyish fingers pluck the dragon-guarded 

fruit 
That hath sorrow for its blossom and black madness for 

its root, 
I am free and franchised yonder on the heights beyond the 

stars, 

228 



Free to guide the Sun God's coursers through the morn- 
ing's shining bars. 
But a crownless prince I wander, and in royal rags I 

stand, 
Stranger to my mother age and alien in my father's land. 
And my eyes grow dull and heavy, wounded by exceeding 

light, 
And my ears are vexed with voices crying ceaseless in the 

night. 
Life, a drab in outworn tatters, hastens to her sullen 

close 
In a masque of Fates and Furies and a mire of Wants and 

Woes. 
Better I were lying yonder, where the golden poppies, spun 
From his raveled cloth of satin, rise to greet Our Lord, 

the Sun. 
Where nemophila lies weeping tears of dew from her blue 

eyes 
For her deeper deeps of azure in the walls of paradise. 
Nay, but Nature hath her vengeance; banned and barred 

and broken, still 
As a God, exacts her incense; as a woman, works her will. 
Angry Nature smears her tablets and the straight lines of 

her plan ; 
And the heavens gain a Poet — but the world hath lost a 

Man. 
Man is one as God unchanging; but the Poet still is three, 
Man and boy and woman, mingled in a changing trinity. 
And the boy within my bosom, starved and stinted, still 

shall claim 



229 



Dew of morning to my noonday, though it shrink in that 

fierce flame. 
I, the dreamer, in my dreaming dreamed a deeper, truer 

truth 
In the silver bubbles floating in the golden halls of youth ; 
Found in his fantastic follies the fulfilling of the law, 
Beauty in the blackened blot and all perfection in the flaw. 
Oh, to throw from off my soul the purple pall of mournful 

rhyme ! 
Oh, to wrench one hour of morning from the niggard hand 

of Time ! 
Oh, to see the years behind me swiftly lessening down the 

night. 
All the world untrod before me at the breaking of the 

light ! 
Oh, to see, a careless boy, the gilded bark of morning float 
Through the rosy seas of ether and through purple hills 

remote ! 
This were more than Poet's poem; this were more than 

singer's song; 
Though the ages swept them starwards on increasing 

currents strong. 
Fool ! Tf Fancy lead thy footsteps, let her lead them to 

thy gain. 
Get thyself largesse from Sorrow and a guerdon out of 

Pain. 
Shall the boy's v^^eak fingers, clutching his mirage of 

earthly things 
Hold thy wild, exulting sorrow, soaring on exalted wings ? 
Wilt thou lead the ages captive in a fickle chain of joy 



230 



Of the evanescent roses from the forehead of the boy? 
Drown thy soul in azure deeps of his serene, untroubled 

eyes ; 
Jove-like, set his shining hair a constellation in the skies. 
This were folly past the folly that a folly's wage beseems ; 
This were folly crowned by madness at the ivory gate of 

dreams. 
There be braver banners flying than the banner of the boy. 
With its field of gold and azure and its crimson rose of 

joy. 
Throw thy all within the balance ; weigh thy more against 

his less; 
Thou art captive — Crowned and Sceptred — murmur not at 

thy duress. 
Ate lights the torch of fancy and the Furies fly behind ; 
He shall pawn his heart who wears the costly jewels of 

the mind. 
Let thy almond flower of Beauty bloom upon the barren 

rod; 
And thy scattered Rose of Passion strew the path that 

leads to God. 
Gather thee thy little all, and bring the undiminished whole 
To the Lord in many regions and the Captain of the Soul. 
Oh, the stars in heaven are many ; but the Sun is crowned 

and One, 
And his star-crowned vassals render homage to Our Lord, 

the Sun. 
Keats, untimely slain in battle: Shelley, dead beside the 

sea; 
Tennvson, the flawless mirror to reflect all chivalrv; 



231 



Homer's shining antique spear and Shakespeare's mediaeval 

lance ; 
These have rifled all the castles in the kingdom of 

Romance. 
And the golden halls stand empty, and the shining land lies 

bare, 
And the lesser knights but gather crumbs of Honour for 

their share. 
Wilt thou at the laureled altar break the Bread of Life 

with these. 
Drink the sacrificial chalice to its black and bitter lees; 
Waiting in the inner holies, spirit naked and unshod, 
For the Accolade of Phoebus, and the Golden Spurs of 

God? 



232 



THE GIFT OF THE SOUTH TO LINCOLN 

As Florence drew about her breast the Hlies of her scorn, 
And sent an exile from her heart, her First and Eldest 

born. 
The flawless gem, the flashing star, the fair, imperial 

flower, 
Which might, diminished twenty times, have been a 

nation's dower ; 
So we, exalted o'er the lands, to whom the Babe was born, 
Received him with our lamps unfilled, and laughed the 

Gift to scorn. 
The river of our ancient blood, a river deep and wide, 
Encircled with its sullen waves our purple peaks of pride. 
The crowned phantoms of our race, their ghostly voices 

cast 
Into His balances, that weigh the future with the past. 
Our voice annulled the voice of God, we trod the blossom 

down; 
Ourselves, with ruthless hands, despoiled the Jewel from 

our Crown. 
Our Morning Star, by night forbid to give its light, went 

forth ; 
Our Wandering Pleiad rose afar, the Pole Star of the 

North. 



And as the faithless city yearns in pangs of mother pain. 
And stretches forth her empty hands to claim her own 
again. 



233 



Our earth-born voices cry to him across the voiceless 

void; 
We strive to warm our hearts before the fire ourselves 

destroyed. 
And still the Thought ! That fadeless lamp on altars of 

regret. 
Might Time approach Eternity to pay so dear a debt ! 
To us remains, with hands made clean, with contrite 

hearts to bring 
Such gifts as Love may lay before a Prophet, Priest and 

King. 
We give a gift, a gracious gift, a gift of gifts, to shine 
More dear than frankincense, or myrrh, or gold before 

his shrine. 
We give the purple of our pride, the scarlet of our sin, 
Wherewith to weave a snow-white pall for him who lies 

within. 
Doubt not he knows ! Doubt not to him, the Just and 

Merciful, 
Our purple is as cloth of gold, our scarlet white as wool. 



234 



MISERERE DOMINE 

OCTOBER 10, 1911. 

Thou dost not know, My Well Beloved, 

Within her bosom sleeping, 
With what mad steps the earth hath moved 

That holds thee in her keeping. 
Thou shalt not know; and I rejoice 

That These, at least, are holy; 
God's Silence o'er the people's voice. 

And Death above life's folly. 

The people greet their queen today, 

Their new crowned Progress hailing. 
Oh, God ! If this their mirth, I pray 

Let me not hear their wailing. 
From spirit heights I see beyond. 

Oh, discord of tomorrow ! 
Oh, glad, exultant voices wanned 

And beaten thin by Sorrow ! 

Oh, Christ ! In yonder Human shrine ; 

Oh, God ! Above its steeple ; 
Oh, Mystic Trinity Divine, 

Pity this frenzied people. 
Thy rods to heal their sin, oh. Lord, 

With gracious balms of Sadness ; 
Draw not the lightning of Thy Sword 

To slay them in their Madness. 



235 



I kneel within a falling shrine, 

Before a broken altar; 
An outworn creed I hold divine, 

With loyal lips I falter. 
Between me and a sacred flame 

Her scarlet robes are flaunting; 
Between me and the Holy Name 

Her sacrilegious vaunting. 

Upon exceeding mountain heights 

Her Guilty World is tendered. 
But I retain mine ancient rights, 

Serenely unsurrendered. 
She shall not claim my sacred wine, 

The Sacrament of Sorrow; 
The Bitter Bread of God is mine, 

And mine is Death's Tomorrow. 

Dear Dead ! The feet of Death are clean 

From all her crimson welter. 
Thou liest on yon slope of green 

With yon green hills for shelter. 
And that I loathe Life's stain and flaw, 

And also that I love thee, 
I, too, would rest by thee, and draw 

Yon gracious green above me. 



236 



THE PRAYER OF THE WEST 

Judge Thou Between Them 

We thank Thee, oh, God of our fathers, for the gift of the 

sword and the clew ; 
For the strength to drive nations before us, for the 

patience to build them anew ; 
For Thy Light to Thy servants restricted, and Thy 

Promise reserved to the few. 

We thank Thee, oh, God, that Thy Wisdom hath made us 

Thy shepherds, to keep 
With the sword of the flesh and the spirit, the steps of 

Thy wandering sheep. 
That hath showed us the fields of Thy harvest, and the 

sickle wherewith we shall reap. 

We have set forth our lamps on the mountains, that the 

nations might see them from far; 
O'er deserts and seas and morasses, we have followed the 

course of Thy Star, 
That Thy Light might be got of the shadows, and Thy 

Peace of the travail of war. 

Thou art mighty, oh, God, Thou art just. 
And we zvho are dust of the dust. 

We cry to Thy Justice to witness how well we have served 
in our trust. 



237 



We have sought out the festering places; we have swept 

them with fire and with sword; 
In the dungeons of heathenish darkness, we have let in 

the light of Thy Word. 
The paths and the highways are garnished, and made clean 

for the steps of the Lord. 

We have hunted their priests from the altars, where the 

blasphemous wonders were shown; 
And their heathenish temples lie shattered, or standing 

deserted and lone. 
Shut silence and shadows to worship, the impotent idols 

o'erthrown. 

We have broken their tyrants, and lifted the serf to the 

heights of a man; 
In the race to the swift and the strong, we were foremost, 

but still, as we ran 
We paused in the sweating and tumult, and hewed to the 

lines of Thy Plan. 

Thou art mighty, oh, God, Thou art good. 
If our hands he not guiltless of blood. 

Yet we cry to Thy Goodness to witness how we have with- 
held and withstood. 

Comes Esau, the seller of birthrights, to clutch at a birth- 
right forsworn; 

Come princes of paganish peoples ; come peoples decadent, 
outworn; 

238 



And the walls of Thy citadel crumble, blown down by the 
blast of their horn. 

We are thrown as a prey to the spoiler; they compass our 

way with their wrath ; 
We sink in their whirlpools of envy, that are set as a pit in 

O'ur path ; 
We are flung from the rocks of their hatred, and pierced 

by the lances of Gath. 

Oh, God of our fathers from olden. Destroyer and Builder, 

we claim 
Thy Promise, delivered in thunders, and circled by curses 

of flame. 
And Thy visible aid, as the sanction of the deeds we have 

done in Thy Name. 

Thou art mighty, Lord Christ, who wert human. 
And we, who are compassed with foeman. 
We cry to Thy throne for assistance, in the lifting of man 
born of uoman. 



239 



THE CRY OF THE' EAST 

Judge Thou Between Them 

We were great of aforetime; our fathers, from their seat 

on the roof of the world, 
Looked down on the valleys beneath them, where the 

smoke of their camp fires upended, 
And their trumpets rolled thunders before them, and their 

strength on the valleys was hurled. 

Their lightnings flashed down from the mountains; they 

girdled the earth with a flame; 
They pressed to the lips of the nations the red cup of 

trembling and shame; 
And the lands fled away from their coming, and the 

desert sprang up when they came. 

As a ghost brushed aside by the morning, is the tale of our 

victories told. 
As shadows trod down by the noonday, with our blood 

grown more wise, or more cold, 
We would sit in the sun in our fashion and worship our 

Gods as of old. 

Art Thou mighty, oh, God, art Thou just? 
Then we, who are trod in the dust, 

IV e cry to Thy justice to witness how ill these have served 
in their trust. 



240 



The halls of the Orient echo to the footstep of soldier and 

priest ; 
As vermin they cling to her garments; as locusts flock 

down to the feast; 
As vultures sink claws in her bosom to tear at the throat 

of the East. 

The beautiful temples are shattered and the glorious images 

broke ; 
And the holy signs and the wonders, at the shrines where 

the oracles spoke 
Have vanished, like shadows at noonday, or columns of 

wind-driven smoke. 

They have broken and banished our princes; the base and 

unclean they set high ; 
The rights of our fathers are juggled, and set on the cast 

of a die, 
From the tangle of red in the centre, to the uttermost edge 

of the sky. 

Art Thou mighty, oh, God, art Thou good? 
Then these torrents of innocent Hood 
Shall sweep o'er its shedders accusing, to the steps of Thy 
throne in its Hood. 

Lo, the round table feast of the brothers, and Esau sits 

down to the feast ; 
Lo, the weighing of lands in the balance, and the greatest 

sprung forth from the least; 

241 



Lo, the Hour, brought' to bed of the Nation, to strike for 
the rights of the East. 

And the trump of the Gods on the mountains, that calls to 

the peoples from far. 
That they rise in the mirk of the midnight, and watch for 

the light of the Star, 
Begot at the barbaric bridals, and borne in the travail of 

war. 

Such "faith," to the faithless we proffer, as lies in the lie 

of our word; 
Such "brotherhood," bastard-begotten; such "peace" as 

the wars may afford; 
Such "rights" as are spat from the rifles, and caught on 

the point of the sword. 

To the Gods of our race in the distance, 
We cry, zvith pathetic persistence. 

With the cry of the younger begot, for we claim but the 
■ right to existence. 



242 



THE POET'S PROTOTYPE 

I envy not the God of Light 
His dalHance with the Dawn; 

I envy not the Queen of Night 
To young Endymion, 

Nor Zeus his compelHng might; 
I am Bellerophon. 

Men call me mad for that I keep 

A tryst beyond their ken ; 
A light above yon upper deep 

Beckons to me again; 
I mount my winged steed and sweep 

Beyond the sight of men. 

A Splendid Passion is my guest 
Who bars the door to Sleep, 

Who in the dungeons of my breast 
Bids captive Reason weep, 

Who drives the wounded feet of Rest 
Up yonder starry steep. 

We mount the path of stars that shine 

Beyond the earth's eclipse; 
From fountains of the Soul Divine 

A Radiant Madness drips; 
Gasping, I drink the Hallowed Wine 

With foaming of the lips. 

243 



THE MUSE TO A MERCENARY "POET" 

Lackey and scullion ! Dost thou seek for hire 
To trail the white robes of the God in mire? 
Think'st thou to fill the bounds of thy base need 
With a King's Ransom, or a Poet's Meed? 
Or wilt thou set the holiest Muse of Art 
A common drab upon the public mart? 
Soul hunger shalt thou know and not be fed ; 
Though thy gross bod}' find its fill of bread. 
Soul thirst shall parch thee with an arid heat; 
Though pleasant waters sparkle at thy feet. 
Pleasure shall seek and woo thee as a bride; 
Thou shalt arise — filled and unsatisfied. 
A Voice shall cry to thee and thou shalt hear 
Faint through the earth born ringing in thy ear; 
A Light shall shine for thee and thou shalt see 
With clouded vision, dim and fitfully; 
Voice and Light beckon to thee, but never again 
Through all thy dolorous days of joy or pain 
Shalt thou the Sword, or the Lost Clew regain. 
Dust of the earth ! Clay of the common clay ! 
Go down to shadows with thy little day. 
But till thy night fall, my revenge I wreak, 
The Agony of Lips that may not Speak. 



244 



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